


Your Time Will Come (If You Wait For It)

by DarthAbby



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A:AOU rewrite, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, CA:CW rewrite, Clint is a Disaster, Multi, Soulmates, Soulmates feeling each others pain, Tony Is a Good Bro, but what else is new, smashing 616 and MCU canon on the ground and making something even better out of the pieces, until Science intervenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2018-12-25 05:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12028683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthAbby/pseuds/DarthAbby
Summary: Between impersonating a not-Avenger, keeping the streets of New York slightly safer, becoming friends with the not-Avenger, and saving the world against the better judgment of friends new and old, Kate Bishop definitely does not have time to worry about if the old stories about soulmates are true or not.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for [sergeant_angel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_angel/pseuds/sergeant_angel) who wrote the most amazing (and significantly less painful) soulmate fic for Steve/Kate/Bucky and got me hooked on the ship
> 
> this is all your fault

Kate Bishop was always cold. It was simply a fact – the sun rises in the East, the Pope is Catholic, and the Bishop heiress wears layers during the sweltering New York summer. The only time she didn’t feel two degrees from freezing was when she was using a bow. The cello kind, the archery kind, it didn’t matter; when she had a bow in hand, it seemed like warm blood finally flowed through her veins.

On very, very rare occasions (so rare that she could only remember it happening twice in all of her 19-and-a-half years), the cold lessened on its own (never fully gone, just lightened from freezing to chilly) – and a massive migraine would leave her bedridden for days.

So when Kate woke up feeling downright  _ warm _ , and with no pain prickling behind her eyes, she was very suspicious. Nothing changed all day, and she decided to enjoy it while it lasted.

She enjoyed it for a week and a half before New York was suddenly attacked by aliens, and there were bigger things to worry about. Because of course it happened while she was out to lunch with some friends, far away from her bow and quiver. She did her best to protect her friends, and the other innocent civilians around them, though, fighting hand-to-hand with any aliens that got too close. They were holed up in a small boutique, Kate and a nervous looking kid guarding the door.

A red and gold flash zoomed past the windows, followed by a horde of aliens on their hoverboard-things.

The kid glanced at Kate. “At least Iron Man is here.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the carnage outside. “At least he isn’t alone.”

(Everyone had seen the news reports – Iron Man and a guy in the old Captain America uniform, taking some weird dude in Germany captive only a dozen hours earlier. Some people thought it was actually Cap. Kate wasn’t so sure, but at least he seemed to be willing to fight.)

Kate’s group made it out of the Battle of New York mostly unscathed. No one was in critical condition, at least, which was more than many others could say. The only bit that confused her, afterwards, was the stabbing pain she had felt in one moment, like a knife to her gut – she had assumed it was a horribly timed bout of cramps, but checking later proved that her period had not come early. It had faded soon enough, and hadn’t even been debilitating, but it was still strange nonetheless.

For the next four years, things continued in much the same way. Kate no longer felt icy cold every moment of the day, and occasional random pains would hit her.

_ “Have you ever heard of that old theory?” _  a friend slurred one night, after many drinks and listening to Kate gripe about the sudden, unexplained pain in her forearm that had caused her to drop a plate earlier.  _ “Well, more like a… like a legend? An old wives’ tale. That whenever you feel all, uh, painful and shit? For no reason? That’s because your, your soulmate just got hurt.” _

_ “So, what,” _  she had scoffed.  _ “You’re saying that somewhere out there, my soulmate is getting the shit kicked out of them every few weeks? That doesn’t explain the cold, though.” _

He had shrugged sloppily, one shoulder at a time, and squinted at her.  _ “I dunno, maybe they were living in fucking, like, Serbia – Siberia? or somethin’. Somewhere cold as balls.” _

She had laughed, and taken away his drink, and told him to go to bed. He had passed out on the couch, Kate had then commandeered his bed, and in the morning she had mostly forgotten about the entire conversation.

And then, after four years, the blinding migraines returned. Kate was bedridden for a week, subsisting off of water and crackers. In the middle, for thirty long minutes, the pain had tripled, and Kate had  _ screamed _ . The sharp, achy pains that followed, like being hit by a truck and then shot multiple times, were nearly a relief after that.

When she felt marginally more human and able to return to civilized company, it was to the news that the shadowy government organization who had helped stop the alien invasion four years ago turned out to be the bad guys, and Captain America (because it really was him) had taken them down with the help of the Black Widow (who had dumped all of SHIELD’s secrets on the web, and had since come forth and testified in front of a Congressional committee) and a brand  _ new _  hero, this one with wings and a jetpack (who was called the Falcon, and had been part of some military program). Cap had also apparently been seen fighting a guy dressed in all black, with a  _ metal arm _  what the fuck, not long before the takedown and also during that whole nonsense.

Kate had squinted at the news, wrinkled her nose, and gone back to bed.

It was three months after the fall of SHIELD that Kate Bishop met Clint Barton.

* * *

 

So, maybe going the vigilante route wasn’t the smartest idea, but in Kate’s defense, the usual authorities had more pressing matters on their mind. The cleanup of the Triskellion and the three Helicarriers in D.C. was still months away from being even close to done, and the local police in NYC were more than busy with small-time super villains who thought they were hot shit just because they could pack a slightly harder punch, and insufferably cocky without the threat of SHIELD hanging over their heads.

Regular muggers and rapists, in the meantime, were slipping through the cracks with even more rapidity than usual.

Kate held no illusions about herself – she was good,  _ really _  good, but she wasn’t superhuman.  Let the real heroes and the local law enforcement deal with the creeps with ice guns and sand manipulation. She was more than happy to prowl for garden variety assholes.

It was just a bonus that the bad guys usually freaked out a little when an arrow went whistling by their head and pinned their jacket to the wall, cursing a blue streak about the Avengers in general and Hawkeye in particular.

After a while, she stopped trying to correct them. Hell, if she was doing half of her work through reputation, might as well use it to her advantage, right?

The voice modifier wasn’t even that expensive, really, even though she had splurged for the one that came built-in on a lower face mask.

Which is how she found herself one Saturday evening – no, wait, shit, Sunday morning – threatening to tear a man’s testicles off with her bare hands if he ever touched someone without their express consent again, keeping him occupied while the girl she had saved called the police to come pick up the asshole.

“W-what do I say?” the girl asked, clutching the phone to her ear like a lifeline. “Who even  _ are _  you?”

“I’m Hawkeye,” Kate said easily, voice low and gravely through the modifier. “And just tell them it was a good Samaritan that put the fear of God in this dickhead.”

It might be the right thing to do, but she knew that vigilantism, however nice the outcome, was frowned upon by the establishment.

She yanked the arrow out of the wall, where it had been holding said dickhead by both his shirt and jacket, just shy of his actual ribcage. “You stay put,” she growled, glaring through the goggles she wore to cover most of the rest of her face. “I’m not going far – one false move, and the next one goes through your  _ hand _  into the brickwork.”

He nodded rapidly, and she didn’t turn her back as she melted into the shadows, keeping one eye on him at all times as she retreated to a safe distance. Safe for her, at least. The dickhead was still very easily in range.

A squad car rolled up soon enough, and as the cops calmed down the shaking girl and put the dickhead in cuffs, a voice spoke right behind Kate.

“Hawkeye, huh?”

She whirled around, arrow notched and drawn before she could even think about it. The guy leaning against the dumpster behind her was decidedly unimpressive – ratty jeans with torn up hems, a black hoodie that had ‘RANGERS’ splashed across the front in bold yellow, and purple Converse that looked two steps from falling apart.

“That’s me,” she finally said, unnerved by how utterly blasé this stranger was about having an arrow aimed directly at his chest by a sharpshooter.

The guy snorted and shook his head, pushing off the dumpster and turning to walk away. “You want that name, you gotta earn it, kid.”

“Ex- _ cuse _  me?!” she spluttered, releasing the tension on the bowstring and dropping her arms to aim at the ground. “Who the fuck are you?”

He looked over his shoulder, giving her a grin in the dim light, and held up one hand. She watched, bewildered, as he quickly ran through a series of handshapes that she only vaguely recognized as sign language. The last shape – a mostly closed fist with thumb pressed against the heel of his palm – transformed into what was clearly a parting wave, and the guy sauntered off.

Kate blinked at his retreating form, at a loss for words.

“What the actual, ever-loving  _ fuck,” _  she whispered to herself, returning her arrow to the quiver on her back and pulling out her phone, setting a reminder for herself to look up some ASL books tomorrow – no, wait, shit, later today. God, when did it get to be three in the morning?

* * *

_ H-A-W-K-E-Y-E _

He had fingerspelled out  _ Hawkeye _  in the alley.

The scruffy dude wearing a sweatshirt that was clearly too small through the shoulders for him… was  _ Hawkeye? _  The  **real**  Hawkeye?

She was so screwed.

* * *

As it turned out, it was pretty easy to find out where an Avenger lived.

_ “I'm looking for Hawkeye.” _

_ “The arrow dude?” _

_ “Yeah.” _

_ “Why are you asking me?” _

_ “Because you're the best place in New York to get fletching? Come on, give me something here.” _

_ “Well, I do try. I think Barton’s in central-ish Brooklyn. You ever hear of Bed-Stuy?” _

_ “Thanks, man.” _

_ “Yeah, whatever. You gonna buy anything or what?” _

Bedford-Stuyvesant. A small area for New York, but still a lot of ground to cover.

Kate was born and raised to be charming, though.

_ “Hello, ma’am! Hi, I was wondering if you knew where the local archer lives?” _

_ “Fah-cking menace! He's a menace! Shooting ah-rrows everywhere! What you want with him? Gonna knock some mannah’s into his thick skull?” _

_ “Um… yes?” _

_ “Good! He's four blocks down and six up. Look for apartments with ah-rrows everywhere. Can't miss.” _

_ “Thank you!” _

_ “DON'T FORGET TO TELL HIM: HE A MENACE!” _

Not that charm was really necessary in this case, apparently.

As it turned out, Kate didn't really need to ask for directions. As soon as she got close enough, she could make out a satellite dish with a single arrow poking out of it.

“Not sure if Barton’s the menace here or the hero. Comcast sucks,” she muttered to herself, walking up to the door and buzzing for  ~~**K.** ~~ **c. Barton**

There was no reply, but a few moments later the door unlocked with a loud click. Kate rolled her eyes as she stepped in. Say what you will about her good idea to bad idea ratio: at least she didn’t let strangers into her home without a second thought.

Barton, of course, lived up on the  _ fuck your legs _  floor, and the elevator was nonexistent. It didn’t bother Kate (too much), thanks to all of her vigilante-ing and regular workouts, but it was still annoying.

By the time she got to the door, she was feeling fairly aggravated. So when the guy who opened the door (white t-shirt with a purple bullseye, purple sweatpants barely hanging onto his hips, bandage up near his hairline) was, in fact, the same guy from the alley, she felt pretty justified in shoving him backwards and storming into the apartment.

“Uh, hi,” Barton said eloquently.

“You!” she said, waving a finger at him. “You - you -”

“Me?”

“You’re  _ fucking _  Hawkeye!”

He blinked. “I mean, I’ve been told to go fuck myself many times, but I’ve never managed to act on it. Gotta wait for the alternate dimensions to kick in for that to really happen.”

“You know what I mean!” she snapped. “You’re Hawkeye - you’re an Avenger, a former SHIELD agent, and you’re an  _ asshole _ .”

“Okay, one,” he said, counting off on his fingers. “Not Hawkeye anymore. Two, not an Avenger anymore. Three… okay, yeah, that’s true. And honestly the fourth thing is, too.”

“Then what was that bullshit in the alley?” she demanded.

“Alley? What - oh,” he smiled. “That was you. Of course - voice modifier threw me off.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”

He nodded. “Smart thinking.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Oh, right. Well, I’d heard that Hawkeye was running around again, taking care of low-level jerkwads, and thought to myself  _ ‘who’d want to be Hawkeye?’ _  So I went looking for you, and found you.”

“No shit,” she grumbled. “But what was with all that cryptic nonsense?”

He shrugged. “You want to be Hawkeye, that’s fine. But it’s more than just hitting a target. You’ve got to be able to hold your own - you’ve got to be smart enough to find the information you want, dedicated enough to go looking for it, fast enough to put it to use before it’s obsolete. You wanna run with superheroes, without any powers of your own? You gotta be able to keep up.”

“I’m not running with anyone,” Kate said shortly. “I’m not looking for a team, or to be an Avenger or whatever. I just want to help people, and  _ I _  don’t need help to do that.”

He studied her for a long moment, just assessing her and her words. “Why the bow?”

“What?”

“Why the bow? Of all the things you could have taken up, why archery?”

“I didn’t like fencing.”

He blinked, smile stretching across his face again. “You know what, girly-girl? I think you’ll do just fine.”

“Thanks. And it’s Kate. Kate Bishop.”

“Clint Barton.”

* * *

Over the course of the next seven months, Kate came to the conclusion that Clint was incredibly unlucky, completely hopeless when it came to human interaction, and generally bad at being human all around. He was also Kate’s friend and mentor… and the worst trouble magnet she’d ever seen. Even her best friend, who attracted trouble like boys to milkshakes, wasn’t this bad. And  _ he’d _  been kidnapped. Multiple times.

She did take time to complain to said best friend about the fashion of the local Russian mafia, of course. Who was still wearing tracksuits these days, anyhow? Those went out of style when she was still in middle school.

Lucky was sweet, though, she had to admit. Clint did have good taste in dogs.

They were just finishing up with the tracksuit draculas, and coming to an agreement on the usage of ‘Hawkeye’ between the two of them, when Clint got an encrypted message from an unknown sender, whom he immediately identified as the Black Widow.

“So?” Kate asked. “What does she want?”

“I’m suiting up,” Clint said, eyes scanning over the words for the fourth time. “Avengers are reassembling.”

“Thought you weren’t an Avenger.”

“ _ No one _  was an Avenger after Loki - team disbanded and we all went our separate ways. Then the SHIELD-shit hit the fan and… anyways, the band’s getting back together. Taking down Hydra cells. And  _ you _ ,” he said, glancing up to give her a stern look. “Are staying out of it.”

“What?!”

“I mean it,” he said, looking more serious than Kate had ever seen him before. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with this. I want you to pack up and take Lucky to my safehouse. It’ll only be for a few weeks, maybe a month.”

“A  _ month _  - wait, weren’t all those compromised when SHIELD fell?” she argued.

“Not this one. Off the books. I’m leaving in the morning - you’re leaving tonight.”

“You can’t just - !”

“Kate,” he said, and that shut her up more than anything else. Clint  _ never _  called her just Kate. It was always girly-girl or Katie or Katie-Kate or Bishop or Hawkeye. Never Kate. “You’re my backup, okay? If the shit hits the fan again, I need to know exactly where you are and that you’re safe so that, if worst comes to worst, I can call you in on a moment’s notice.”

She crossed her arms and looked away. “...fine. I’ll go. But,” she looked back up at him. “I demand daily updates. You miss even  _ one _  and I’m busting in to rescue your sorry ass. Deal?”

“Deal.”

* * *

_ “Hey, you wanna switch out?” _

_ “No, I’m good. If you wanna get some kip, now’s a good time ‘cause we’re still a few hours out.” _

_ “Few hours from… where?” _

_ “Safehouse.” _

* * *

It was Lucky that first knew that morning. Kate was curled up on the couch with a book, ever-present phone resting under one leg, when Lucky scrambled up from where he was laying on the floor, claws scrabbling against the wood as he rushed to the door. Kate was on her feet, book exchanged for bow before she could even think.

It was quiet for a few long moments as she took up a defensive stance in the hall, keeping Lucky back with one leg. There was a murmur of voices outside and the door creaked open.

The arrow was flying before she could register that Clint was the one in the doorway. “Let’s ho-  _ Jesus Christ Katie!” _

The arrow was wobbling slightly from where it was embedded in the doorframe.

“Clint?!”

Lucky surged forward, rushing to greet the owner he hadn’t seen in three and a half weeks. Clint fended him off with one hand, keeping the other securely around the waist of someone who could only be the Black Widow. Kate belatedly recognized the other Avengers grouped behind them on the porch, looking various degrees of alarmed.

“Who else would it be?!” Clint demanded. “Lucky,  _ get down. _ ”

“I don’t know, whoever you were trying to protect me from by sending me out here!” Kate snapped, moving forward to restrain Lucky until Clint had a chance to get the Widow settled. “Which, by the way, has been the most boring thing on the  _ planet _ .”

“ _ Listen.” _

Whatever half-assed excuse Clint was going to try was cut short by Iron Man pushing his way past the two assassins to stand in front of Kate. They both crossed their arms and raised their eyebrows.

“Anthony.”

“Katherine.”

In her peripheral vision, Kate saw Clint furrow his brows. “Uh, guys, this is -”

“Kate Bishop,” Tony interrupted. “Twenty three year old heiress to Bishop Enterprises, and much too high-class to be staying on a farm in the middle of nowhere.”

“Twenty  _ four _ .”

“Whatever.” They stared at each other for another long moment before Kate finally cracked.

“Oh my  _ god _ , I’ve missed you.”

Clint’s expression went from concerned to bewildered as Kate threw her arms around Tony in a hug, which he happily reciprocated.

“Me?” he scoffed. “I thought bird boy was your new best friend.”

Kate laughed as she released Tony. “Nah, he only buys the really cheap pizza.”

“Hey!”

The two finally turned their attention back towards the others, grinning. “What?” Tony said. “Rich kids gotta stick together.”

Clint opened his mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again, then decided not to bother with a shake of his head and a sigh. “I hate you both,” he grumbled, helping the Widow over to the couch. “Avengers, Kate and Lucky. Kate and Lucky, Avengers.”

The rest of the team filed in behind, looking only slightly less concerned than before.

“Sorry for barging in,” Cap said as he walked by.

“Yeah, we would have called ahead, but we didn’t know you had anything to do with Barton until exactly one minute ago,” Tony said, wandering into the living room with the rest.

Kate nodded. “Yep, that’s the way I wanted it.”

Clint snorted. “You were practically begging to go with me a few weeks ago!”

“Don’t live in the past, Clint.”

“But it’s so tempting, because you’re not there.”

“Ouch.”

Tony flopped onto the couch next to the Widow, and promptly received a lapful of Lucky. “So, uh, how  _ do _  you two know each other?” he asked, rubbing behind the dog’s ears.

“You know how I have all those archery tournament trophies from high school?”

“Yeah…”

“I never actually gave it up, I just sort of, well, went vigilante with it? Kept getting mistaken for Hawkeye, so I decided  _ ‘why not?’ _  and started calling myself that. Then Clint found me, and then Lucky found Clint, and then there was that thing with the dipshit, fashion-deprived mafia -”

“The ugly tracksuit guys? Kate, oh my god, I thought they were just rude assholes on the street!”

“Yeah, no, they were Russian mafia thugs. And then Clint got the call to assemble and shipped me out here.”

Tony dropped his head in his hands dramatically, which Lucky took as in invitation to kiss him all over, much to his consternation.

* * *

Everyone split off one by one. Thor took off - literally - and Kate still had no idea what that was about. Showers were taken, spare clothes retrieved from the Quinjet, and Kate found herself standing in the window of the master bedroom while Clint dug through his clothes to find the exact plaid shirt he wanted, watching Tony chop wood with Captain America in the front yard.

“So,” she said flatly. “What happened out there?”

No answer.

“Clint.”

“...we got hit hard,” he said heavily. “Natasha especially. And I guess Thor, too.” He came to stand next to her at the window, fiddling with his cuffs. “And the Hulk sort of went on a rampage through the nearest city.” He sighed and shook his head. “I hate mind control.”

“The enhanced girl? From Sokovia?”

“Yeah, and her asshole brother. They were there with Ultron, getting vibranium. And they certainly got it.”

“That can’t be good.”

“Nope.”

They stood together for a moment, watching Tony and Cap chat over the wood pile.

“So, what now?”

“Now?” Clint sighed and shook his head, moving towards the door. “Now I’ve got no clue.”

* * *

Kate was in the kitchen when Cap walked in, frowning at the fridge. With all the people in the house, people who had just burned countless calories, she had realized that a big dinner was probably in order, and was trying to figure out what to scrounge together.

“Hello.”

She absolutely did not jump out of her skin when someone unexpectedly spoke behind her. Nope. Kate Bishop is a master vigilante, trained by a master assassin, and 100% does not get startled by someone saying  _ ‘hello’ _  in a perfectly friendly tone of voice in broad daylight. Not. At. All.

“I’m so sorry,” Cap rushed to apologize as Kate shook her hand out from where she had banged it against the fridge handle.

“It’s fine, I’m fine, it’s… fine,” she said lamely, giving him a smile that probably wasn’t as shining as she hoped. “What can I do ya for, Captain?”

“I was just wondering if I could trouble you for some water,” he said, smiling back despite the small worry line between his brows.

“Help yourself,” she said, gesturing towards the cupboards. “Glasses are in there.”

“Thanks.”

She gave up on dinner ideas for the moment and shut the fridge as Cap got himself a glass and filled it at the sink. He leaned back against the counter, and she mimicked his position at the table.

“Run out of wood to chop?”

He nodded. “And Clint asked Tony to take a look at the tractor in the barn. Said it wasn’t starting.”

“Oh.”

Cap took a long drink of his water, draining more than half of the glass. “Where is everyone?”

“Natasha and Dr. Banner are upstairs getting cleaned up,” she answered. “I assume Tony is in the barn, Clint said he was taking Lucky out to the field, you and I are here, and who knows where Thor went. Well, Heimdall, probably.”

That startled a laugh out of him and she smiled, pleased.

He finished the rest of his water and turned to refill his glass. “Anything I can help you with, Miss Bishop?”

“Kate, please. And no - you’ve done more than enough, Captain. Thank you.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said, raising his glass at her in a sort of toast/acknowledgement. “And, please, call me Steve.”

“Then thank you, Steve.”

“You’re very welcome, Kate.”

* * *

“Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time. My contacts say he’s building something. The amount of vibranium he made off with… I don’t think it’s just one thing.” Nick Fury didn’t look happy, but then, Kate sort of doubted he ever did. The whole team was gathered in the kitchen, listening to the former director’s grim news as he moved somewhat aimlessly around the kitchen.

Dinner had been a tense affair. Kate had pulled together vegetable-and-beef soup, and it had been nearly silent the entire meal, everyone on edge as soon as Fury had sauntered in behind Tony. Now, with most of the dishes starting to pile up in the sink, it seemed it was time to get down to business. Everyone had distanced themselves around the room, creating something like a perimeter. Kate wondered if it was on purpose as she pulled herself up to sit on the half-wall between the living room and the kitchen.

“What about Ultron himself?” Steve asked from where he was leaning against the entrance to the living room.

“Oh, he’s easy to track,” Fury said dismissively. “He’s everywhere. Guy’s multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit. Still doesn’t help us get an angle on any of his plans, though.”

“He still going after launch codes?” Tony was on the other side of an arched opening in the wall, looking into a mudroom area where he was idly throwing darts at a board on the wall.

“Yes, he is, but he’s not making headway.”

“I cracked the Pentagon’s firewall in high school on a dare,” Tony frowned.

“Yeah, well, I contacted our friends at the Nexus about that.” Fury said, slicing off a piece of bread from what little was left of the loaf.

“Nexus?”

“It’s the world internet hub in Oslow,” Bruce answered Steve’s question. “Every byte of data flows through there. Fastest access on Earth.”

“So what’d they say?” Clint asked, fiddling with the fletching on a dart as Tony went to retrieve the ones he had thrown.

“He’s fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed.”

“By whom?” Tony flinched back as two darts hit the bullseye inches from his nose, and turned to give Clint a dirty look. The marksman gave a shit-eating grin and a shrug.

“Parties unknown.” Fury looked distinctly unimpressed with their antics.

“We’ve got an ally?” Natasha was the only one still at the table.

“Ultron’s got an enemy,” Fury clarified. “That’s  _ not _  the same thing. Still, I’d pay folding money to find out who it is.”

“Might need to visit Oslow,” Tony mused. “Find our unknown.”

“Well, this is good times, boss, but I was kind of hoping when I saw you that you’d have more than that,” Natasha said, giving Fury a guarded look.

“I do,” he replied earnestly. “I have you.” There was a long moment of silence. “Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere, ears everywhere else. You kids had all the tech you could dream of. And here we all are, back on Earth, with nothing but our wit and our will to save the world. Ultron says the Avengers are the only thing between him and his mission. And whether or not he admits it, his ‘mission’ is global destruction. All this,” he said, gesturing around broadly, “Laid in a grave.”

There was another silent moment of contemplation among the Avengers.

“So stand,” Fury resumed, sitting down at the table. “Outwit the platinum bastard.”

“Steve doesn’t like that kind of talk,” Natasha said dryly.

“You know what, Romanoff?” Steve trailed off, a jest of threat. She smirked at him.

“So what does he want?” Fury said, ignoring the two.

“To become better. Better than us - he keeps building bodies.” Steve pointed out.

“Person-bodies,” Tony said, the glint of an on-coming epiphany in his eyes. “The human body is inefficient; biologically speaking, we’re out-moded. But he keeps… coming back to it.”

“When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you  _ amazingly _  failed.”

“They don’t need to be protected,” Bruce said quietly, catching on to Tony’s train of thought as he stepped forward from the china cabinet to stand by the table. “They need to evolve. Ultron’s going to evolve.”

“How?” Fury questioned.

“...has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?”

There was a brief moment where Tony and Bruce locked eyes, clearly on the same unpleasant idea. “We need to get to Seoul,” Tony said. “And Oslow. Like, yesterday. Suit up.”

The Avengers scattered, off to prepare for the coming fight, until only Clint, Fury, and Kate were in the kitchen.

“You should get ready,” Fury said evenly, staring at Clint.

“Yeah, I should,” he agreed, not moving from the chair he had claimed halfway through the conversation. “So, you’re a motivational speaker now? Got any graduation ceremonies lined up?”

“Get in your tac vest, Barton,” Fury said. “You’re gonna need it.”

“You’re not my boss anymore, no matter what Nat says.” Clint challenged. “You can’t drag any more hapless kids off the street to do your dirty work.”

“No,” Fury said. “But, apparently, I don’t need to.”

Kate saw the line of Clint’s shoulders tense even as she felt her own draw up.

Fury leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “You’re down an Avenger, Barton. A damn important one. Thor flies off, and we never know when or where he’ll turn up again. Aliens are unreliable like that.”

“She’s not coming.”

“ _ She _  is right here,” Kate cut in before it could go further. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

Clint clenched his jaw, but stayed silent, which was as close to permission as she was going to get.

“I’m an adult. And, more importantly, I’m Hawkeye. I want to help.”

“This isn’t like taking down some thugs doing shady property deals, girly-girl,” he warned, twisting to look at her. “This is a killer - an indiscriminate killer who thinks he’s doing the right thing. There’s nothing more dangerous.”

“I know,” she said evenly. “But if you try to leave without me, I’ll follow, even if I have to fly commercial.”

Clint sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Katie…”

Fury smirked slightly. “Kids are so infuriating, aren’t they? Punishment for our own childhoods, my mother liked to say.”

Clint’s head hit the table with a groan and he made a quick sign to Kate behind his back. She grinned widely and leapt off the half-wall. “Thanks, Hawkeye.”

“Don’t thank me when you’re dead, Hawkeye.”

She darted up the stairs, eager to pull on the suit that had just been lying at the bottom of a drawer for almost a month.  _ Finally _ .

* * *

Kate made her way back to the stairs in time to hear a wistful complaint from Steve.

“You know, I really miss the days when the weirdest thing science ever created was me.”

“I’ll drop Banner off at the Tower,” Fury said, shrugging his coat on. “You mind if I borrow Ms. Hill?”

“She’s all yours. Apparently.” Tony said, giving him a sideways look.

“What are you gonna do?” Steve said, interrupting the staring contest between Tony and Fury before it could even start.

“I dunno,” Fury said casually. “Something dramatic, I hope.”

He sauntered out in the same fashion that he had arrived in, and Kate raised an eyebrow as he billowed out the door. “I’m still not sure if I like him or not.”

“No one is,” Tony said, turning to look at her critically. “What’s all this?”

“My gear.”

“Your - are you coming with us?” he frowned. “But who’s going to hold down the fort here?”

“Neighbor is taking in Lucky,” she said flatly. “And you guys need all the help you can get, to be honest.”

There was a slightly surreal moment when Tony and Steve were both looking at her with the same concerned-parent look that Clint had given her in the kitchen, and Kate wondered when, exactly, she had picked up all these new Mom Friends.

The two then broke off to look at each other. “You’ve got the dynamic duo, Fury’s got Banner. She’s coming with me.”

Steve nodded once, then hesitated. “We’ve only got one Quinjet.”

Tony looked back around at Kate, eyeing her getup more closely. “That mask - reinforced?”

“Yep, with a voice modifier.” She pulled it off from where it had been hanging around her neck and tossed it to him. “What are you thinking?”

“High altitude, high speed travel isn’t very kind on those without either jets or one of my suits,” he said, holding it up to the light to examine it. “But I can make this work. Grab a thick jacket and meet me outside in ten minutes.”

He hurried into the kitchen, muttering something about homebrew filtration systems, and Steve shook his head with a slight smile. “Be careful in Oslow. I have a feeling Tony’s game plan is to kick the hornet nest.”

“Me?” she smirked. “I’m not the one going after the murder-bot.” She turned to head back upstairs to find a jacket, but hesitated and looked back. “Come back in one piece, okay? All of you.”

“I’ll do my absolute best,” he promised.

She nodded and hurried up the steps.

* * *

_ “The human race will have every opportunity to improve.” _

_ “And if they don’t?” _

_ “Ask Noah.” _

_ “You’re a madman.” _

_ “There were more than a dozen extinction-level events before even the  _ **_dinosaurs_ ** _  got theirs! When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, He’s winding up.” _

* * *

“A hacker who’s faster than Ultron?” Tony mused, typing rapidly at the central hub of Nexus. “They could be anywhere. And as this is the center of everything, I’m just a guy looking for a needle in the world’s biggest haystack.”

“How do you find it?” one of the techs asked.

“Pretty simple. You bring a magnet.” He glanced at her, then back to the keyboard. “ _ Ooooh I’m decrypting nuclear codes and you don’t want me to!” _  Kate snorted at his bad parody, and he flashed her a smile over his shoulder, hitting one last key. “Come and get me.”

The wait was tense - Tony’s eyes never left the screens, and the three techs seemed to be made entirely of nervous energy. Kate felt more than a little useless - she was hardly a slouch with technology, but faced with these four, she was practically a child.

Ten minutes ticked by, and she could see Tony getting twitchy. Before she could say anything though, a sharp pain radiated through her chest and she stumbled backwards with a grunt.

“Kate?!”

Tony was at her side in an instant, hand on her shoulder. “Kate, talk to me, what’s wrong?”

“Just another rand-  _ ungh _ .” The pain hit again, cutting off her reassurance, and she mouthed curses through the ache. It didn’t last long (it never did, outside of the migraines), and she straightened up, rubbing her sternum to see Tony’s concerned face. “‘m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” he sighed. “But this isn’t the time or place to do anything about it.”

She recognized that look in his eye and scowled. “I am  _ not _  sitting this out, Tony.”

“But -”

“But  _ nothing _ ,” she snapped, on edge with pain and nerves and tired of being treated like she was so fragile. “I’m staying with you, end of discussion.”

There was a short burst of beeps from their comms - Cap’s team had gotten the cradle. Time to head to New York.

The terminal beeped and Tony left her to go see what had been found. Kate rolled her shoulders and stepped up behind him. “So?”

A grin was slowly spreading across his face. “So, I found our hacker.”

“And?”

“And it’s better than I could have ever imagined.”

* * *

Ultron had Natasha. Steve was still in Seoul. Thor was still MIA. Fury had disappeared. And that left two Hawkeyes and two scientists in Avengers Tower with a prototype body.

All in all, not the best day ever.

“Anything on Nat?” Bruce asked as Tony walked back into the workshop. He had stepped out after making sure the cradle was secure to ‘change his clothes.’ While his t-shirt was different, Kate was pretty sure he was actually just quietly reuploading the saving grace they had found in Oslow to the Tower mainframe.

“Haven’t heard,” he said shortly. “But she’s alive, otherwise Ultron would be rubbing our faces in it.”

“This is sealed tight,” Clint declared. He had been almost solely focused on the cradle since arriving, clearly trying to distract himself from the worry and guilt over leaving behind Nat and Steve, even if it was direct orders.

“We’re going to need to access the program, break it down from within,” Bruce explained.

“Any chance Natasha would leave you a message outside of the Internet? Old school spy stuff?” Tony asked, getting to the heart of the issue.

“There’s some nets I can cast,” Clint nodded, heading towards the stairs. “Yeah, I’ll find her.”

Kate hurried after him - while she couldn’t do much to aid Tony and Bruce, Clint could probably use a hand, or at least a friendly face.

Between the gear Clint and Nat had squirreled away in the Tower and the stuff Tony had lying around, it wasn't hard to put together a listening post. Encryptions were sent out, old codes that only a handful of people would recognize, and one very specific radio frequency was being monitored by an old fashioned rig.

"Hey."

Clint turned at Kate's quiet word and raised an eyebrow at her.

"We'll find them," she reassured. "We'll get Natasha back and stop Ultron."

"Yeah," he sighed, looking back at the screens. "Sure."

It was silent for a moment, then Clint spoke again.

"When did she become 'Natasha' to you, anyways?"

"Please," Kate said, trying for a laugh. "You guys spent a whole day at the farm. I talked to everyone."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone. Well, except Thor, but that's because he wasn't there."

Clint furrowed his brow as he considered this new information. "And?"

"And what?"

"And, what did you think of them? Earth's Mightiest Heroes, running scared from one of our own's work."

Kate settled back in her chair more comfortably. "Two."

"What?"

"Two of your own's work. Tony didn't make Ultron by himself, Bruce helped, too. He told me."

"...oh. Right."

"For the record, I think you guys are being a bit too hard on Tony," she said. "He made a mistake, sure, but he had no way of knowing that Ultron would turn out this way and that the first thing he would do would be to scrub JARVIS out of the servers. He's working his ass off to fix this. Cut him some slack."

Clint didn't respond for several minutes, and Kate was starting to worry that she had crossed a line when he finally spoke again. 

"I know."

"You know?"

"I know Stark isn't to blame. Not completely. But you didn't," he made a pained noise in the back of his throat and clenched his fist on the top of the desk. "You didn't see them. Ultron attacked us, flew off to terrorize more people, and Stark just  _laughed_."

Before Kate could think of a response to that, the old fashioned radio jumped with static, and Clint swept up the headphones immediately. He pressed one to his ear, and smiled slightly at what he heard.

“Well?”

“It’s Nat,” he said, activating the tracking program on the computer. “She’s alive, conscious, and no doubt really pissed off.”

Kate’s phone beeped just as Clint narrowed down Natasha’s location. “Cap’s back. And he brought friends.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked JARVIS to alert me if anyone showed up.”

“JARVIS? But -”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm. “Come on, Hawkeye.”

Tony had glass floors - Kate, personally, didn’t like them all that much, but she had to admit that in this instance, they were pretty useful.

Clint maybe took a little too much joy in shooting out the panel under Pietro Maximoff’s feet, but Kate wasn’t going to ruin his fun as he stepped up to put a foot on the speedster. “What, you didn’t see that coming?”

She nocked an arrow as she moved to stand next to Clint, but didn’t aim anywhere except the floor. The twins had arrived with Cap, so there must be a good reason for their presence.

One of the machines upstairs started beeping frantically. “I’m rerouting the upload!” Tony announced.

There was the distinctive clang of metal hitting metal, and Kate looked up in time to see the shield whizzing past, followed by a repulsor blast.

Pain lanced through her chest even as she heard Steve’s grunt as the blast threw him back. She barely spared a thought for the strange timing as she and Clint rushed for the stairs, handgun and bow at the ready.

They arrived just in time to see a blast from Tony’s chestpiece throw him and Steve both backwards, and Kate barely covered a grimace as the ache in her chest deepened.

Bruce was pushed back by Wanda, and before anything else could happen, Thor burst in.

A small part of Kate wondered if dramatic timing was a necessary requirement to be an Avenger, as they were certainly all very good at it.

The god leaped up on top of the cradle and raised his hammer, lightning flashing through the workshop. Everyone stopped, only able to stare as he overpowered the machine seemingly to the point of explosion.

Thor was thrown back as a figure emerged smoothly from the wreckage of the cradle; a life-sized Ken doll in red and silver, with a yellow gem glowing in its forehead.

_ What. The actual. Fuck. _

There was a long pause as the… what even was it? Another robot? An android? Ultron 2.0? ...as the creature surveyed them all before rushing Thor and being  thrown through the window.

Thor and Cap followed it out into the main living area, but stopped. Neither moved as the creature observed the twinkling lights of the city.

The others made their way from the wrecked workshop in time to see it turn away from the window and craft a blue-gray bodysuit seemingly out of nothing as he floated away from the windows to land on the floor by Thor.

“I’m sorry, that was… odd.” Whatever it was, it sounded a lot like JARVIS, which was also weird. “Thank you,” it said, giving Thor a nod. Kate bit her lip as a gold cape, similar to Thor's deep red one, appeared over the creature’s shoulders.  _ I must’ve reached my weird quota for the day because that was almost funny. _

“Thor,” Steve spoke up. “You helped create this?”

“I had a vision,” he explained. “A whirlpool that sucks in all life, and at it’s center, is  _ that _ .” He pointed at the glowing stone.

“What, the gem?” Bruce asked, cautiously moving closer.

“It’s the Mind Stone,” Thor said. “It’s one of the six Infinity Stones, the greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities.”

"Then why would you bring it -”

“Because Stark is right,” Thor said, cutting across Steve.

“Oh, it’s definitely the end of times,” Bruce groaned.

“The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron,” Thor continued.

“Not alone,” the creature added.

“Why does your Vision sound like JARVIS?” Steve asked.

“We reconfigured JARVIS’ matrix,” Tony explained as he and the creature - the Vision? - moved towards each other, as though each needed a better look at the other. “To create something new.”

“I think I’ve had my fill of new.”

“You think I’m a child of Ultron?” Vision questioned.

“You’re not?” Steve challenged.

“I’m not Ultron,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “I’m not JARVIS, I am… I  _ am _ .”

“I think, therefore, I am.” The words tumbled out of Kate’s mouth before she could stop them, and Vision turned his attention towards her.

“Precisely.”

“I looked in your head,” Wand cut in, drawing Vision’s attention. “And saw annihilation.”

“Look again.”

“Yeah, her seal of approval means jack to me,” Clint muttered as he walked closer, Kate at his side.

“Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself - they all came from the Mind Stone,” Thor explained. “And that’s nothing compared to what it can unleash. But with it on our side - ”

“Is it?” Steve demanded, looking towards Vision. “Are you? On our side?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Well, it better get real simple, real soon,” Clint threatened.

“I am on the side of life. Ultron isn’t. He will end it all.”

“What’s he waiting for?” Tony asked quietly.

“You.”

“Where?” Pietro asked.

“Sokovia,” Clint answered. “He’s got Nat there, too.”

Bruce stepped forward, and though nothing about him physically changed, Kate could see the danger lurking in his eyes. “If we’re wrong about you,” he said, eyes never leaving Vision’s, “if you’re the monster Ultron made you to be…”

“What will you do?” he questioned.

There was no answer, but Kate thought the look in Bruce’s eyes said it all.  _ Whatever it takes. _

“I don’t want to kill Ultron,” Vision said, moving around Bruce. “He’s unique, and he’s in pain. But that pain will roll over the Earth, so he must be destroyed. Every form he’s built, every trace of his presence on the ‘net. We have to act  _ now _ . And not one of us can do it without the others.” He came to a stop between Thor and Steve, and looked down at his hands. “Maybe I am a monster. I don’t think I’d know if I were one. I’m not what you are. I’m not what you intended. So there may be no way to make you trust me.” He grabbed something off of the table and turned to hold it out to Thor. “But we need to go.”

Kate was fairly sure everyone’s breath stopped for a moment at the sight of Vision holding out Thor’s hammer - the hammer no one but Thor should ever be able to pick up - like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Thor looked between the hammer and it’s holder for a long moment before reaching out and grasping the handle. Vision let go and walked away as Thor looked back at the others. He tapped  Mjölnir against his palm, as though to reassure himself that it was the real deal. “Right,” he said, moving to follow Vision. “Well done.” He clapped Tony on the shoulder as he passed.

“Three minutes,” Steve said, seemingly out of nowhere. Everyone turned to look at him. “Get what you need.”

Clint’s hand brushed Kate’s arm, and she glanced over to see him gesturing for her to follow while signing rapidly.

She wasn’t completely fluent yet, but she got the gist as she followed him towards what could only be called the armory. She was to stay as far away from the fighting as possible, evacuate civilians, and keep out of trouble. His hands started moving faster, making the signs sloppy and difficult to read, and she reached out to still his fingers with her own.

_ Calm _ , she fingerspelled slowly into his palm.  _ Breathe. _

He opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it and just led her over to his corner of the armory, putting together two specialty quivers for both of them. She transferred a few favorite arrows from the one already slung over her shoulder into the new one he was putting together and sat down to re-tie her shoes, just to do something.

It was going to be a long day.

* * *

_ "No way we all get through this. If even one tin soldier’s left standing, we’ve lost. There’s gonna be blood on the floor.” _

_ “I’ve got no plans tomorrow night.” _

_ “I get first crack at the big guy. Iron Man’s what he’s waiting for.” _

_ “That’s true, he hates you the most.” _

* * *

_ “Ultron knows we’re coming. Odds are, we’ll be riding into heavy fire. And that’s what we signed up for. The people of Sokovia, they didn’t. So our priority is getting them out. All they want is to live their lives in peace, and that’s not going to happen today. But we can do our best to protect them, and we can get the job done. We find out what Ultron’s been building, we find Romanoff, and we clear the field. Keep the fight between  _ **_us_ ** _. Ultron thinks we’re monsters, that we’re what’s wrong with the world. This isn’t just about beating him; it’s about whether he’s right.” _

* * *

It’s hard to tell, during the battle, what aches and pains are hers and what aren’t. She was supposed to get clear, to follow the civilians and take up a sniper position. That plan falls apart as a portion of the city rises into the air.

Lots of things fall apart when that happens.

The church… she doesn’t want to think about the church. It had been a relief at first, seeing everyone in one piece again, confirming that everyone was still standing. Then it had just turned into a nightmare of robots and arrow after arrow springing from string to robot head.

Cap told them to evacuate. Wanda stayed behind, Clint commandeered a convertible and drove her and Nat to the closet boat.

She doesn’t like thinking about Pietro, sacrificing himself for Clint and a child, who hustle onto a different boat while she follows Steve.

He doesn’t comment on it, lets her help him guide refugees onto the next boat. When the ground starts to drop away beneath his boots, her heart leaps to her throat in the terrible seconds between his startled look of realization and the heavy thud of his body landing on the boat. She drags him away from the edge with a grunt.

Afterwards… the afterwards might be the worst part.

They survived, somehow. Everyone but Pietro. And she sees the deep regret cut across Clint’s face whenever the thought crosses his mind. Thor and Tony are fished out of the lake, Bruce is off the grid again, SHIELD is reforming, and their wounds are treated.

It still doesn’t feel right.

Tony invites her to the new Avengers Facility. She accepts - not like she has anywhere else to go, other than Clint’s apartment. She stopped visiting her family a while ago. They didn’t seem to notice.

Tony peels off when they arrive to talk to Steve and Thor, and directs her to what he calls the training room. Wanda and Vision are inside. Kate nods at them silently and makes a beeline for the rope netting hanging against one wall. It’s the thick, sturdy kind used on old-fashioned boats to haul cargo aboard.

Wanda and Vision pay her no mind as she climbs up to the open rafters and finds a spot to simply sit and watch.  _ Perfect _ .

Two others eventually arrive: War Machine and Falcon. War Machine seems happy enough to stay on the ground, but Falcon spots her perch after a few minutes and opens up his wings.

“Hi.”

She doesn’t say anything as he lands on the beam beside her. She knows that the combination of her resting bitch face and sunglasses is enough to send most people off after a few minutes of ignoring.

“I’m Sam,” he says, undaunted. “You must be Kate. Steve told me about you. Barton’s mini-me or whatever.”

She rolls her eyes behind dark lenses. She isn’t  _ Clint’s _ , she doesn’t belong to him. They share a name and a specialty and a friendship, and sometimes a dog. Possessive grammar grates on her nerves even on good days. Today is not a good day.

Sam is quiet for a while, not even looking at her. That’s fine, she can work with that. She’s almost disappointed when he speaks again. Almost.

“You’re not like the rest of them.”

“Excuse me?” The words snap out before she can even try to reign them in to keep her silent and mysterious act going.

Sam nods down towards the three below. “A soldier in a tin can, a weapon in a skirt, and something incredibly dangerous with a goddamn British accent. I’m a soldier, Steve’s  _ the _  soldier, Nat’s an assassin, Barton’s an assassin, Thor is a warrior prince, Stark’s a genius in a tin can, and Banner is, well,  _ Banner _ .”

“So?”

“So, how’d you end up here?” he asks, finally looking over at her. “Rich girl with a hobby and some weird friends, who helped save the world? Not something you see every day. You’re not like them, like  _ us _ . You aren’t a soldier or a spy or anything else.”

“No,” she agrees. “I’m something just as good, though.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

The door opens, and Steve and Nat stride through. Kate grins and pulls her knees up to her chest, in preparation to flip and fall down to the floor.

“I’m Hawkeye.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two, as promised! This was supposed to dive right into CA:CW but my muse had other ideas apparently (mainly making Kate feel like shit). So enjoy a long, emotionally conflicted chapter!
> 
> Let me know if the spacing is weird - I wrote 98% of this and am posting it from my phone and it's hard to tell.

Kate collapsed into her bed with a groan. Training had been rough that day - Steve and Natasha were out doing something important and classified for Fury, so they had been left to their own devices. Wanda had challenged Kate to a shooting match (though was it really shooting if it was magic blasts?) and she had, foolishly, agreed.

She’d won, but her shoulders hadn’t ached like this in years.

At least she wasn’t the only one suffering. Sam had looked distinctly put-out about the bruise he refused to talk about blooming on his jaw after coming in from what was supposed to be a relaxing flight around the compound. Kate was pretty sure she heard him cussing out some bugs under his breath though, whatever that meant.

She was just about to drop off into dreamland when her ankle caught on fire.

Not literally (although weirder things have happened), but the pain lancing up her leg certainly burned as she sat up to examine the damage. Nothing. Of course.

Kate dropped back against her pillow with a huff, trying in vain to ignore the throbbing ache of her _perfectly fine_ ankle.

Fucking bullshit, is what it was.

She was sort of used to it by now, after over five years of dealing with the random, sudden pains that had plagued her once the mysterious freezing sensation had gone away. That didn’t mean she had to like it, though. At least cold can be combatted with sweaters and fuzzy socks - she had yet to find any pain medication that worked. Sprained wrist, broken nose, cracked ribs; as long as she knew the cause, it was treatable (thank god, considering how often she wound up following her namesake’s path right through a window). Feeling like she’d taken Thor’s hammer to the chest or like there were invisible flames roasting her ankle? No dice. She just had to suffer through it.

Kate huffed out a frustrated sigh and curled up under her blanket. It would be better in the morning. It always was.

* * *

 

Things did improve in the morning, but not as much as she had hoped. Her ankle still ached, which sucked, but Steve was back, which didn’t.

He had also made coffee, which was even better.

She was limping ever so slightly when she wandered into the kitchen, following her nose straight to the coffee pot.

“Hello, gorgeous,” she sighed, grabbing her mug (an enormous ‘I <3 IRON MAN’ affair that Tony had gotten her as a joke ages ago, but she used unironically because it held two and a half times as much coffee as a regular mug) and filling it.

“Good morning to you, too.”

Kate spun around, almost losing her balance but saving it (and her coffee) at the last moment by putting her right foot fully on the floor. Which was a bad move, she realized a nanosecond later with a wince, because that was the one that still hurt.

The amusement was still easy to read in Steve’s eyes, but his face, overall, looked more concerned. “Sorry, Kate. Didn’t mean to startle you. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said automatically. “Just… twisted my ankle yesterday. I’m fine. Hi, Steve. Where’d you come from?”

“Brooklyn,” he deadpanned. She rolled her eyes, and he smiled. “Sorry, it’s classified. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yup,” she said, going to sit next to him at the breakfast bar, clutching her ridiculous mug to her chest. She might not be constantly cold anymore, but she still craved warmth, all the time. Habit, she supposed, or maybe just making up for the first nineteen-and-a-half years of her life. “So, _when_ did you get in? Or is that classified, too?”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

“Why aren’t you collapsed in an All-American dreamland, then?”

It was Steve’s turn to roll his eyes, which he did with a small smile. “Slept on the plane. And I’ve got a report to write.”

“Fun.”

“Very.”

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, drinking their coffee as the sun rose higher. It was stupidly early - usually the only one up at the crack of dawn was Sam, because he was a masochist who actually enjoyed running several miles every morning. (The only reason Kate was out of bed was because she couldn’t stand the idea of tossing and turning in just-this-side-of-unignorable-pain any longer once she had smelled coffee.)

The thought had barely crossed Kate’s mind when the back door opened and the man himself walked it. “Steve! Wasn’t sure you’d be back today man,” he said, clapping his friend on the shoulder as he walked by, on a mission for his own coffee.

“Change of plans,” Steve said evenly. “Nat’s finishing the mission on her own.”

“Yeah?” Kate questioned, shifting in her seat to raise an eyebrow at him. “Why’s that?”

“Well,” he started, looking a bit sheepish.

Sam snorted as he set down his mug on the opposite side of the counter. “What’d you do this time?”

“I didn’t -!”

The look Sam leveled at him was so distinctly unimpressed that Kate was tempted to grab something and take actual notes. If it could make _Captain America_ look like a guilty child, Lord knows what wonders it could work on Clint.

Steve sighed and looked down at the dregs of his coffee. “Jumped out a window.”

“Hey, that’s _my_ thing. Get your own.”

“And how high was this window?” Sam asked, ignoring Kate’s interjection.

“About… eight floors up? Nine?”

“So, ten,” he sighed, giving the ceiling a long-suffering look. “At least. And when you hit the ground?”

“I may have screwed up the landing because I was being shot at,” Steve admitted. “And may have sort of shattered my ankle.”

 _“Steve.”_ It wasn’t often that Kate and Sam were in sync, but she had noticed in the few months they had been here that, when they were, it was because Steve had done something stupid because he thought he was invulnerable.

“It’ll be fine by tomorrow!”

Sam shook his head and picked up his mug. “It’s too early for this, even by my standards. Hawkeye, I’m putting you on Cap Watch. Make sure he doesn’t do anything _else_ stupid while I’m getting a shower.”

“I’m meeting Tony for lunch at the Tower, don’t take too long.” It was a long drive from the compound to the city, and Kate was only fashionably late to public events, not private meetings.

He raised his mug in acknowledgement as he walked out of the kitchen, and Steve turned to give Kate a look. “ _Cap Watch?”_

“It’s necessary sometimes,” she said. “You know, I really thought that someone so close to their 100th birthday would have more common sense.”

“Hey!”

* * *

Tony and Kate had a standing lunch date for the second Tuesday of every month. In the close to 10 years of the regular appointment, it had only been cancelled a handful of times. They had seen each other at their worst (and that had taken on a whole new meaning after Ultron), but it still wasn’t expected for Kate to limp into Tony’s workshop with her eyeliner badly smudged (even for being yesterday’s) and her nose red.

“Kate! You’re early - whoa, what happened?” The blueprints in front of him were promptly dismissed as he noticed the state of his friend.

She hung her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m stupid.”

“That’s a lie. Who told you that? I’m gonna kick their ass, and then I’m gonna tell Clint and Natasha and they’re _also_ going to kick ass and then tuck the body away somewhere no one will ever find it. I’m sure they have several locations ready just for that purpose.”

She gave a breathless laugh. “Please don’t. It’s not Steve’s fault, really -”

“Steve?” That brought him up short. “ _Steve_ Steve? Capsicle?” Tony scowled as he made his way around the desk to usher Kate over towards the comfy couch in the corner. “What did Rogers do?”

“I told you, nothing -”

“Don’t lie to me, Kate,” he said sternly, pulling her down to sit next to him and wrapping a warm arm around her shoulders. “I haven’t seen you cry since you were seventeen, and now the waterworks are going off over _nothing?_ Just tell me what happened.”

She hunched her shoulders, leaning into him. “He was off on a mission the past couple days, just got back this morning with a shattered ankle. We were talking in the kitchen, and Sam stopped by to get coffee and wrangled the story out of Steve, and then he told me to make sure the idiot didn’t hurt himself getting to his room. We stayed in the kitchen a bit longer, and then…”

* * *

_"You really should get some rest, you know.”_

_“Yeah. A shower sounds nice, too.”_

_The crutches she hadn’t noticed before were retrieved from the stool on his other side, and he carefully stood, keeping his weight off of his right leg._

_She stood as well, moving towards the hall. “Come on, hero. I’ll get the doors for you.”_

_“Thanks.”_

* * *

"So, you were a good little Girl Scout? I fail to see how this ended up in tears.”

Kate dropped her head into her hands. “Because I was tired and stupid.”

“I’m gonna need more of an explanation than that.”

* * *

_Kate led the way down the hall. They were both tired - coffee had helped, but the fact remained that Kate hadn’t slept well due to the ache in her shoulders and the pain in her ankle, and no one, not even Captain America, could get any sort of real rest on a transport plane._

_She’d been tired the night before, too, when she had pulled off her boots and shooting gloves on the way back to her room._

_One small glove + one crutch + one tired supersoldier not paying attention = bad times_

* * *

 

“So… he slipped?”

“On my glove, yeah.”

Tony frowned. “Okay, accidents happen. I’m sure he’s forgiven you. It was an honest mistake.”

Kate just sighed. “You know how I’ve been getting those random pains for the past few years?”

“Hard to miss, you like to whine about it all the time.”

She rolled her eyes, but plowed on. “Last night, it felt like my ankle was on fire. And then, when Steve fell…”

* * *

 

_Steve crashed to the floor with a startled yelp, somehow managing to drive his left knee into his right ankle as he hit the floor._

_He was probably swearing. Kate couldn’t make it out through the white haze of pain that made her crumple to the floor next to him. She definitely was._

_Pain brought clarity. She had felt it when Steve had gotten hit by one of Tony’s repulsors during the Ultron debacle. She had felt it when he had shattered his ankle the night before. She had felt it just then, when he had fallen and hurt the same ankle._

_A memory of a drunken conversation came back to her in a flash._

**_“So, what,_ ** **_you’re saying that somewhere out there, my soulmate is getting the shit kicked out of them every few weeks?”_**

_She opened her eyes, saw Steve reaching out to touch her, looking concerned, and felt panic rise in her throat. She scrambled to her feet, biting back whimpers of pain as her ankle throbbed in protest, and ran._

* * *

Kate was really wishing hard for the couch cushions to swallow her up, but her fairy godparent was taking the day off. Probably the whole year. Probably the entire century.

“Tony? Say something. Please.”

“...I’d say there’s worse people to be cosmically tied to, but Steve is terrible about his personal safety.”

“ _Tony._ ”

He shook his head and ran his free hand through his hair. “Fuck, Kate. I wasn’t serious when I told you about the soulmates thing. I was drunk - _we_ were drunk - and I just wanted to make you feel better.” He sighed heavily. “It was just a dumb story Aunt Peggy used to tell when I was a kid.”

Kate sniffed, tears gathering in her eyes again after rehashing what had happened. “But what if it's _true?_ Tony, I can't,” she took a shuddering breath. “I can't be _Captain America’s_ soulmate.”

She could tell, by the way his other arm came up and wrapped around her so that she was fully encircled, by the way he dropped his cheek onto the crown of her head and sighed, that he wanted to disagree and tell her she was more than capable of seducing America’s Golden Boy, but he held himself back and for that, she was grateful.

Because after getting to know Steve Rogers, Kate knew that she could probably do it. He was a little bit dorky, a whole lot more comfortable with modern technology than most people thought, and smarter than many assumed. He was sweet and foolhardy and ridiculously attractive and sometimes Kate saw the loneliness in his eyes, when he just wanted someone else who understood what it was like to be so literally out of place.

Romancing Steve Rogers? She could do that.

It was everything _else_ that she was unsure about.

She felt it whenever a particularly hard blow landed on him (not every scrape or off-balance punch, thank God, because she probably would never be able to get out of bed if that was the case), but did he feel it whenever she took a flying leap and hoped for the best? Would the serum make him more sensitive to her injuries? Did he have the ache in his shoulders from spending too long at the range yesterday?

And, more than that, who was the Universe to decide what person would make Kate the happiest? She hadn't _asked_ for a soulmate, after all.

A sudden thought hit her, and she started to laugh, just this side of hysterical.

“Kate?”

“He was _frozen_ ,” she managed between giggles. “Oh my god, Tony, he was literally frozen in the ice.”

“Yeah, and?” She could hear the slight concern in his voice, like he was wondering if he needed to call a mental health professional.

“ _And?_ And I was always freezing cold, idiot!”

There was a pause as Tony processed this, and then he started laughing too. Years of wondering why she was so damn cold, and it came down to a Capsicle.

As their laughter tapered off, Kate sighed into Tony’s shirt. “Do you mind if I stay here for a bit?” she asked quietly.

“Stay as long as you want, baby bird.”

She gave a half-hearted slap at his arm. “Don't call me that, Shellhead.”

“Katniss?”

“...borderline, but acceptable.”

There was a pause, then: “You want to order in some pizza?”

“ _God_ yes."

* * *

 

Her phone rang that evening. _Bird Boy 2_ popped up as the caller ID. She had to give Steve credit for not trying to call her himself, but she wasn't going to answer for his best friend, either.

After a few minutes, it rang again. _Bird Boy 2._ Nope, still ignoring that.

Ten minutes passed, and a text from _Bird Boy 1_ lit up the screen.

**_TO: Katie Hawk, 6:18 pm_ **

_so do u wanna tell me why sams blowing up my phone or_

**_TO: Bird Boy 1, 6:18 pm_ **

_Not really. Im staying with Tony tonight so you can tell him im not dead_

**_TO: Katie Hawk, 6:19 pm_ **

_???_

**_TO: Bird Boy 1, 6:19 pm_ **

_I'll explain later_

She tossed her phone to the other end of the couch and curled up with a sigh.

Maybe it was childish, hiding out from Steve at a place where she could literally tell the building to not let him in, but goddamnit she was past caring at the moment.

Tony had disappeared back into his workshop after lunch, leaving Kate to sit on the couch and chanel surf to her heart’s content. FRIDAY was on standby, as always, if she needed anything, and the usual guest room was ready for whenever she decided to crawl into bed.

She really couldn’t ask for anything more. But she also hadn’t felt this shitty in a long time.

Now that she’d had a chance to calm down a bit and think things over, Kate felt like an enormous asshole. She had, in all likelihood, found her actual _soulmate_ and her first reaction had been to run away and hide. Not her best move, really.

And poor Steve was probably still wondering what he had done to make her run in the first place. The guy was distressingly genuine - his number one priority 99% of the time really was the wellbeing of innocents and people he considered to be his responsibility. Kate wasn’t one of the first, but she had definitely been part of the second ever since Tony had dropped her off at the facility months ago.

What was she supposed to do now, though? Head back to the compound and just say “sorry I flipped out earlier, I was having a mild nervous breakdown and needed to cry on a far away couch for a bit. Also, Steve might be my soulmate” and continue on as normal? _Hell_ no. That would never fly.

Kate dragged a throw pillow over her head with a groan. Maybe she could just take up a new job as permanent decoration on Tony’s couch.

She lay quietly for a few minutes, thinking over what kind of job perks that would have, when she was suddenly overtaken by a need to _move_. She’d been sitting almost all day, which had been a rarity for years, and that combined with her nerves was finally morphing into something other than self-pity. What Kate needed right now, more than anything, was a good fight.

Or, she amended as she sat up and stretched, at least a good parkour session over the New York skyline.

She grabbed her shoes and the extra bow and quiver Clint kept in the armory, left her phone where it was on the couch, and headed for the elevator.

“FRIDAY?”

“ _Yes, Miss Bishop?”_

“Take me to the closest access point for the neighboring rooftop. And, don’t tell Tony.”

_“If you insist.”_

* * *

In the future, Kate thought, she should probably skip the ‘going out to have fun’ part and just walk straight into the darkest possible dead-end alley she could find and paint a neon target right above her head.

Cut out the middleman, you know?

Kate wouldn’t say she was in need of saving, per say, but some backup would be nice. She was good, but not ‘take out the entire Wrecking Crew on her own, in the dark’ good.

She just _had_ to interrupt that break-in, didn’t she? Without calling the police, or Tony, or Clint, or anyone else because she had left her stupid phone on Tony’s stupid couch like a fucking imbecile.

_Awesome._

She flipped backwards over a dumpster, the wrecking ball smashing it just a second later. The Crew laughed.

“We’ve got ourselves a little ballerina, boys!” Thunderball cackled, pulling the wrecking ball back in for another swing.

“More like a circus act,” Wrecker sneered. “Whose little bitch are you? Ringling’s, Barnum’s, or Bailey’s?”

“Definitely not yours,” she spat, drawing and releasing two arrows in the span of the three words. They landed in the middle of the goons, releasing a thick cloud of smoke that sent all four into coughing fits as Kate leapt for the closest fire escape. She scrambled to her knees and nocked another arrow as it dissipated. “You boys gonna come in quietly, or not?”

That just made them laugh again. “You and what army, girl?” Wrecker demanded. “Not like you’ve got the Avengers on speed dial!”

_Well, actually, yes, some of them. But that requires having a phone._

Bravado could only get her so far - what Kate really needed was backup. That seemed like an unfortunately long shot, long even for a Hawkeye, at this point.

“You think we’re gonna call in the whole team for you jokers?” a voice scoffed, and Kate had never felt so relieved in her life. The name’s luck, on occasion, was actually a good thing. “I think just two of us is more than enough. Right, Hawkeye?”

“Right you are, Falcon.”

She shot Sam a grin as he swooped down to land next to her on the fire escape. He didn’t return it, and she quickly schooled her expression into something more serious.

“I’ll take the two on the left, you take the right.”

She nodded once, and he took off again as she released her arrow. It landed squarely on Piledriver’s chest, and he laughed as nothing happened.

“Useless!” he jeered.

“Tick-tick-boom.”

“What?”

The arrow exploded, throwing him back several feet just as Sam dive-bombed past Bulldozer, taunting him into running straight into Wrecker, who cursed a blue streak as he got back to his feet.

Kate noticed the wrecking ball headed her way just in time to scramble up to the next platform of the fire escape. She shot off three arrows in quick succession as the remains of the lower section clattered to the pavement.

The rope arrows wrapped around Piledriver’s feet and arms perfectly, and the flash arrow landed in between him and Thunderball.

“Falcon! Up and away!”

Sam shot straight up into the sky as Kate turned away and pressed the trigger on the bow.

The Wrecking Crew shouted in pain as they were blinded, and the two Avengers pressed their advantage. Sam dove back down, wing-slapping Wrecker in the face and using his momentum to kick Bulldozer off-balance. Kate sent another explosive arrow between Thunderball’s feet, throwing him back to land next to Piledriver.

There was a screech of sirens, and several cop cars and a large detainment van pulled up to the mouth of the alley. “Freeze, police!”

The Wrecking Crew, discombobulated and now severely outnumbered, were hauled away with minimum fuss and a lot of shouting, though a good portion of that was at each other. The cops, for the most part, seemed unsure what to do with Kate and Sam, and mostly ignored them. A few gave them nods, and one even subtly tipped his hat, but they didn’t seem to need either hero around.

Sam bumped her shoulder with his own. “You wanna grab a bite?”

Kate watched as Piledriver was finally loaded into the van with the other three and nodded. “Yeah, sure. You’re buying.”

He shook his head and started to walk away. “Cheapskate.”

“Nah, I just left my wallet in my other pants.”

Sam raised his eyebrow and gave her a once over as they passed under a streetlight. “That’s what you were wearing earlier, though. Did you drive all the way here without a license?”

“...maybe?”

He groaned and ran a hand over his face. “You’re gonna be the death of me. You and everyone else on this crazy team.”

“Yeah, but like,” she shrugged, “There are so many, much more boring ways to go.”

He snorted out a short laugh at that, and they continued walking in companionable silence until they reached a little diner. Sam led the way inside and over to a booth, passing Kate a menu from where several were hanging out behind the ketchup. A bored-looking waitress came over after a minute and took their drink orders. She either didn't notice or didn't care about the jetpack/backpack on the seat next to Sam, or the bow and quiver next to Kate.

They perused the standard diner offers for a few more minutes before Sam spoke again.

“So,” he said casually, never looking up from the list of burgers. “What happened this morning?”

Kate tilted her menu up further to hide her face completely behind the plastic.

The waitress passed by again to drop off their drinks and take their food orders. Bereft of her menu shield, Kate stared at the condensation running down the side of her plastic glass intensely.

Sam didn’t push, just slowly stirred his iced tea with his straw, letting the ice cubes clinking together fill the silence. He was just so damnably patient. Kate was pretty good at dodging questions, but that required there to be actual, multiple questions hanging around. One pointed, no-bullshitting-allowed query was harder to get past.

Kate ran her finger down the side of the glass, collecting water droplets on the tip and drawing bullseye patterns on the table. “If I say I don’t want to talk about it, will you drop the subject?”

“No.”

“Figured as much,” she sighed.

He set his glass to the side and leaned forward on his elbows. “Steve didn’t send me.”

 _That_ caught her attention. “What?” she asked, head snapping up to look at him.

He nodded. “He doesn’t know I’m here - thinks I headed back to D.C. for a couple days to see some old Air Force buddies. He _definitely_ doesn’t know about my calls that you ignored.”

“With good reason!” she defended.

“No reason is not a good reason.” He shook his head and took a sip of his tea. “At least you’re still talking to Barton.”

She scowled down at her water. “Why are you so concerned, anyways?”

“Because Steve’s my friend,” he said plainly. “And I thought you and I were getting to be friends, too. And friends talk to each other. He’s hurt and confused, you ran away for no apparent reason, and I’m left standing there, completely out of the loop and a little pissed off.”

The waitress returned, dropping off a large salad and an even larger plate of nacho fries.

“So,” Sam said as she walked away again. “For the sake of my own sanity and in the best interest of this team, would you please tell me what the hell happened?”

Kate weighed her options as she picked up a fry drenched in unnaturally orange cheese. Tell the truth, get called a liar at best and completely fucking insane at worst, most likely get kicked off the team. _Not ideal_ . Claim a nervous breakdown, take a vacation, come back and pretend that absolutely nothing has changed between her and Steve. _Yeah, sure thing, Sisyphus, let's get right on that._ Mix of truth and lie - claim sudden realization of love for Steve? Which scared her (because Hawkeyes are notoriously terrible with relationships?) and she ran and she just needs some space right now. _...yes?_

“I had an epiphany,” she said, slowly, as though testing the words out. “A fucking… terrifying one.” _Truth._

“And what did this epiphany reveal to you?”

“I… I love him,” she said softly, and it was a lie, but it didn't feel like one, not really. A lie of the moment, but not, perhaps, a lie forever. She could, she realized, love Steve Rogers. It could happen, if she let it.

Sam was quiet, apparently musing over her words. “Okay,” he finally said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I don't think that's the whole truth, but I do respect that you deserve a private life. And that whatever you're not telling me probably means you need to stay away for a while.”

Oh, she could kiss Sam if it wouldn't make things even weirder. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ , for finally saying something. And for being stupid enough that I could find you.”

“I had it under control!”

“Mhm,” Sam smirked, picking up a few mildly-radioactive-orange fries of his own. “Sure you did. Which is why you looked so damn happy when I showed up, after specifically avoiding me all day.”

Kate rolled her eyes and picked up a fork, stabbing viciously into her half of the salad. “Shut up and eat your damn food, Wilson.”

“Whatever you say, Bishop.”

* * *

Say what you will about StarkPhones, and the benefits over Apple and Android, but buttdialing was still a terrifyingly real, if rare, possibility.

Tony should really get on that.

In fact, Kate was going to tell him that, to his face, immediately.

As soon as she figured out how to ease her mortification enough to move again.

_Fuck. My. Life._

Kate was the kind of person who talked to herself to try and sort through problems (or bitch about the universe). Hearing something out loud just worked better sometimes than going over it for the millionth time in her head. It was an old habit, a tried-and-true method, and she had never been ashamed of it, per say, just always careful to do it when she was alone to avoid people thinking she was nuts.

 _Alone_ as in, absolutely no one able to hear her, except maybe JARVIS, or now FRIDAY, who wouldn't bother her anyways.

 _Alone_ did not factor in _accidentally buttdialing the person you're ranting about_.

She was so far beyond screwed that they would have to invent a whole new adverb for her.

_“Kate?”_

“Oh my god,” she whispered, staring in horror at the phone in her hand, at the unmistakable on-going call screen that stated, quite plainly, that _Cap’n Crunch_ , also known as Captain America, also known as Steven Grant Rogers, also known as the last possible person on the planet she wanted to speak to right now, was on the other end. “Oh my _fucking_ god.”

_“So, I, uh, take it you noticed your phone finally.”_

Finally? **Finally?!** How long had he been listening? Had he heard the bit about his stupid face that looked too damn perfect? Had he heard the bit about freezing her ass off for years because he was taking a damn nap? Had he… had he heard her cursing the entire concept of soulmates?

_“Kate, say something. Please.”_

“...hi, Steve.”

His relief was nearly palpable. _“Hi, Kate.”_

“I… I didn't mean to call you.”

_“Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”_

“How, uh, how much of that did you hear?”

_“I picked up somewhere around 'cosmic bullshit is bullshit’ and the rant about my face.”_

Kate dropped her head into her free hand. At least he had missed 99% of the soulmate bitching. But, really? The face bit? Goddamnit.

_“Kate?”_

“Still here,” she sighed. “I'm so, so sorry, Steve.”

 _“No, I'm sorry,”_ he said, and, _what?_ What did he have to be sorry for? _“I should have hung up right away, but I just,”_ he blew out a frustrated breath. _“I was just so glad to hear your voice, to know you were safe.”_

“Yeah,” Kate sighed, another wave of guilt crashing over her. “That was a dick move on my part. I'm sorry. I'm fine. I'm at the Tower.”

 _“Okay. Good.”_ There was a lengthy, awkward pause. _“Any idea when you're coming back?”_

“Uh…” All of her stuff was at the compound - her favorite bow, her second bow, her quivers, her clothes, her suit, those awesome probably-Russian-black-market-dubiously-legal boots Natasha had given her, and, of course, her laptop and wallet.

She really needed to get at least the last thing back. Preferably the last three. Ideally all of it.

“I'm not sure,” she admitted. “Soon, though.” Shit. She'd probably have to ask Sam for a ride, or maybe Tony. Clint - did Clint even have a driver's license? He had a pilot’s license, but that was definitely not the same thing. He for sure did not have a car, at any rate.

Steve sighed on the other end of the line. _“Okay,”_ he said. _“I'll -_ **_we'll_ ** _be here when you do. Stay safe.”_

“I will,” she promised, pointedly ignoring his self-correction.

_“Bye, Kate.”_

“Bye.”

The call ended with a beep, and Kate flopped onto the guest bed with a groan.

How did she managed to royally fuck things up so spectacularly?

Right, because she was both Kate Bishop and Hawkeye. Right.

Probably didn't help that she was currently under Tony Stark’s roof, either. After all, he was second only to Hawkeyes in trouble magnetism.

Right.

She needed a damn drink.

* * *

 

Kate still had enough pride in the morning to not ask Sam when he was planning on leaving the city. Besides, since he had found her so quickly, maybe he really had ended up going on to D.C. to see some old friends. Who was she to take that away from him?

Clint, on the other hand, never left New York - rarely even left Brooklyn - unless he had to. He was a safe harbor. And she could talk to him about Steve without words like 'soulmates’ or 'love’ coming up, unlike with Tony or Sam.

Plus, Lucky was there, too.

When Kate entered (read: broke into) his apartment though, she found something even better than a conversation. She found a distraction, in the form of a very ridiculous, slightly concerning pile of cut out newspaper articles, photographs, and markers on the counter.

Clint wasn't there yet, but Kate just put on some coffee, rubbed Lucky behind the ears, and sat down with the most recent, and most intact, paper.

She had already poured herself a mug by the time Clint wandered downstairs, looking restless in that way that said he was tired and brooding a little over something. And not in the least bit surprised to see her.

“Looking pretty antsy there, Clint,” she said, looking back down at her paper.

“Y’think?” he asked, pouring himself a mug, overdoing a little in his inattention.

“In Russia, paper censors you,” Kate joked in a horrible accent. “Was it triple coupon day at Cap’n Dave’s Abundantly Stuffed Quiver Hut?” She gestured loosely at the spread on the counter. “New scissors showed up from Amazon and you just couldn't wait to take 'em for a spin, hm? Ziggy finally find his rainbow?”

“Aw, coffee, no,” Clint sighed, finally noticing the mess from his overflowing mug.

“I can keep going, boss.” She raised her eyebrow as he continued to look moonily after his coffee. “You okay, Clint?”

He gave her a look and picked up his bow and quiver, moving to stand in front of his target. She was well-aware that the question was a bit rich coming from someone who was obviously avoiding most of the team, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to press.

“Seriously,” she said, “How's things? How's… work?”

“Fine,” he said shortly, in a way that clearly meant _not fine at all_. “Things’re fine. Work is - I'm retired, so no work, which is even better.”

“Well that's cool,” she said, watching as he took his shot, three arrows thunking into the target: neck, chest, and groin. She picked up some of the pictures and started flipping through them idly. They all seemed to be of random graffiti tags. “Y’know, they say the Roman Emperor Domitian could fire four arrows at once between his fingers.”

“Showoff.”

“What're these pictures, boss?”

“Vagabond code.”

“What?”

“Vagabond code,” he repeated, heading back for his coffee mug.

“Yes,” Kate said, a touch impatiently. She wasn't the one with hearing problems. “What?”

“Vagabond code. Hobo graffiti. Old carnie thing. Used t’do it when I was a kid in the circus,” he explained. “We'd mark a town up with these little signs, let folks comin’ after us know what's up. These,” he said, nodding at the pictures in her hand and on the counter, “have been springing up over the city for the last week or so. Something's going to happen, and I don't know what it is.” He ran a hand through his hair with a huff. “But shady people are warning folks to get out of town if they don't like heat… because after, the cops are gonna start tearing things up.”

“So,” Kate said slowly, putting together the case Clint had - or thought he had. “Hobos are warning other hobos that something big and/or police inducing, ergo criminal, may be about to occur… and that may-or-may-not involve other hobos… and/or _circuses?”_

“...well, when you say it like _that_ it sounds stupid.”

Kate looked up from the pictures and grinned. “Doesn't sound a whole lot like a relaxing retirement.”

“Last job,” he said firmly. “I'm just doing this one last thing, and then I'm done.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “You in?”

“Of _course_ I'm in, Hawkeye. Have you met me?”

“Dunno why I even asked, Hawkeye.”

* * *

 

Tony was more than happy to buy her a dress. Well, perhaps that was overstating it. He had agreed (in that sort of absent-minded tone of voice he used when people were talking and he was trying to do something brilliant) when she had asked to borrow his credit card to go shopping.

He probably thought it was for retail therapy or whatever.

Personally, Kate found mission therapy to be much more effective.

* * *

So, maybe stealing a boat and all the money wasn't the smartest idea, but in Kate’s defense… it was all Clint’s idea. Not to mention the fact that the money had been stolen from the creepy evil circus people, who had stolen it from the scumbags at the show, who had probably gotten most of it in completely non-legal ways to begin with. Really, it was like a public service. And they weren't even keeping it - they had already agreed to turn everything over to the police, with the exception of a few thousand that would be mysteriously dropped off at an animal shelter the next morning.

After all, it's not like the police would be able to get an accurate count from the scumbags as to how much was stolen.

As Clint ducked into a corner store near where they had left the yacht to tip off the cops, Kate took a deep breath and stared up at the night sky. No stars, of course, there were never any stars in the city, but it was familiar and a little bit comforting nonetheless.

No stars in the city, and no questions, either, which was good, because Kate had no idea how to explain her stolen circus performer outfit, or why she and Clint, still in his suit, had clearly gotten drenched. New Yorkers didn't care enough to question random passerby on the street.

As they finally started back towards Bed-Stuy, Clint cleared his throat.

“So, what's been going on with you?”

Kate groaned and slumped sideways to lean against him as they walked. “It's a long story.”

“Got a quick version you'd rather tell?”

The corner of her lips twitched up in a small smile. He knew her so well. “Basically, I ran away from Cap, and by extension the Avengers, and I've got to go back at some point, but I really, _really_ don't want to.”

Clint nodded slowly, thinking this over. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “It really does.”

* * *

 

Clint let her use his shower and then crash on his couch, snuggled up with Lucky. She texted Tony and told him that she was fine and would be spending the rest of the night and probably the next day doing some 'hawkeye bonding.’ He just responded with a thumbs up and the koala emoji, which, as fluent as Kate was in Stark-ese, she had no idea what that was about.

She didn't question it, though, and just burrowed deeper into her borrowed pillow. Lucky let out a soft noise as she shifted and opened his one good eye to look at her.

“Sorry,” she whispered, reaching up to rub behind his ears. “Go to sleep, boy.”

His tail thumped sleepily against her legs once, twice, and then he closed his eyes again.

Kate tried to follow suit - she was dead tired after running around and fighting circus goons and taking out 'Fifi’ with a fire extinguisher so that she could steal her costume and then walking all the way back to the apartment - but her mind refused to rest.

And her thoughts, of course, were centered around one particular person.

“How am I ever gonna hold a normal conversation with him ever again?” she whispered into the darkness. Lucky snuffled a little, but there was no answer there, unfortunately.

Kate simply couldn't imagine things going back to how they were before, with training and simple missions and poking light fun at one another in their downtime. But she couldn't imagine going back to _before_ before, either. Back when she was just a vigilante with connections and a voice modifier. Neither seemed especially appealing anymore.

What she wanted… what she really wanted… was… she wanted…

She _wanted_ to go to sleep, she decided, scowling as she tried to move the pillow into a more comfortable position. And after that… she had no fucking clue.

She closed her eyes and took deep, slow breaths, trying to trick herself into sleep.

It must have worked at some point, because she woke up the next morning with a crick in her neck and dog hair all over the sweats Clint had lent her. But there was coffee, so that was good.

“So, how's retirement treating you so far?” Kate asked, taking her spot on one of the counter stools.

“Well, woke up to find some damn kid on my couch,” he said, sliding a mug over. “The youth these days have no respect for their elders.”

Kate grinned at him over her coffee, and he smiled back. They certainly made quite the pair, covered in bandages and bruises after the show last night.

“So, why'd you run away?”

Her smile dropped and she looked into her mug as though hoping there would be answers that had been mixed in with the sugar and milk. “Had some uncomfortable realizations.”

“'bout?”

“The team… mostly Steve.”

Clint nodded, leaning back against the counter. “You've got feelings for him.” It wasn't a question, even though it sort of should have been.

“...how'd you guess?”

He sighed, staring into his own mug. “Been in your place before, Katie. It's not fun.”

“What, you got a crush on Captain America?”

“No,” he snorted. “I sort of… well, I fell for my handler at SHIELD.” The admission is quiet, like he's afraid if he speaks too loudly then Fury will show up, demanding answers.

Kate bit her lip as she considered this information. “What happened?”

Clint shook his head. “He died. Battle of New York.”

“Oh, Clint…”

“But,” he pressed on, looking up to meet her eyes. “Before that, we were happy. I swallowed my pride, made a damn fool out of myself, and somehow it worked out. And we were _happy_ , girly-girl. We really were.”

Kate met his determined gaze with what she assumed was a somewhat hopeless one. “That's great, boss. But I don't… I don't think it would be so neat and tidy if I tried the same thing.”

“Why? 'cause it's Cap?” Clint shook his head. “I think you'd be surprised.”

“No,” she sighed. “Because -” The words stuck in her throat and she bit her lip, looking down.

There was a shuffling noise, and Clint was suddenly next to her, warm hand on her shoulder. “It'll be okay, Hawkeye. Whatever's going on, however bad it seems… it'll work out in the end.”

“How do you know?” she mumbled, hating how much she sounded like a child but unable to help it at the moment.

“Because it always is,” he responded calmly. “When I lost Phil…” he trailed off with a heavy sigh, briefly squeezing her shoulder. “It was the worst thing in the world. That night I met you, in the alley? That was the first time I had left my apartment in over a month. I was still a wreck, even though it had been years. Depressive episodes between missions. And then,” his voice lightened, “you showed up the next day, all sass and righteous fury and unwilling to take my shit. It was what I needed.”

Kate sat in stunned silence. She had had no idea, even in the early days, that Clint had been in mourning. There had never even been the slightest hint that he had lost his partner.

Though, she had wondered, in her weeks at the farm, who had set it up, because it was much more organized than Clint could ever manage outside of a quiver. That must have been this mysterious Phil’s doing.

“I think what you need, right now,” he continued, “is to talk to Steve. Clear the air, y’know?”

Kate finally looked up, meeting Clint’s tired eyes, and was overwhelmed by the urge to hug him. She didn't fight it, standing up and holding him tightly.

“Okay,” she whispered into his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I'll… I'll head back to the compound, talk to him. I need to apologize for running off, at the very least.” She had already done so over the phone, but it wouldn't hurt to do it again in person. She squeezed Clint tighter. “Thank you.”

“Any time, Katie. Any time.”

* * *

 

It’s a long, quiet ride from the city to the compound. Sam gives her a lift the day after her talk with Clint - three days after she had left. She had gotten a cheerful promise to 'rain hell’ from Tony if she needed him to, and a reminder that she was always welcome in the Tower, when she had said goodbye.

She gives herself a mental pep-talk for most of the ride. She can do this, she can have an adult conversation about feelings and shit with Steve. She had gotten an A in that bullshit etiquette class her mom had made her take (barely an A, but that's not the point). She's _totally_ got this.

Until they pull up and Steve is waiting for them just outside and _nope, nope, do_ **_not_ ** _got this, shit, is it too late to turn around? Probably, and Sam would never go for it. Fuck._

Sam cruises on by Steve and walks into the building without a word while she's still getting out of the car, because he's a terrible friend. And Kate will remember this moment the next time they train together. _If_ they ever train together again, that is, providing Steve doesn't kick her off the team right then and there.

She finally closes the passenger door and walks over to him. “Hey,” she says, internally wincing at not having anything better to open with.

“Hey,” he responds, and he doesn't _look_ pissed, which is good, right? Unless he has a good poker face? Shit, why doesn't Kate know that? She's so screwed. “Glad you made it back in one piece. Mostly.” He eyes the handful of bandages still visible on her face and arms.

“I'm fine,” she says automatically. “I was just… helping Clint with some stuff. It's fine.”

He presses his lips together. _Shit, he's mad. Damnit, Clint, why do we always have to go through the window?_

“Yeah,” he says, and there's something a little weird about his tone of voice. “I'm well aware with how Hawkeyes operate. Did you leave _any_ windows intact?” The corner of his mouth twitches and oh, _oh,_ he's… trying not to laugh?

She honestly hadn't expected that.

“We only broke the one,” she defends, and now that she's realized, she's holding back some laughter, too. Nervous giggling more than actual amusement, to be honest.

Steve lets himself smile at that, and shakes his head. “Good to have you back, Kate.”

“Good to be back,” she says, and it's nerve-wracking, but it's true. She'd missed the team - she'd missed Steve, even with how much she was dreading talking to him about the 'cosmic bullshit.’

_Like ripping off a bandaid, right? We're still in the garage, I can still bail if things get bad._

_…maybe I should pack a bag first, though._

“So,” Steve says, and clearly she's not going to have time for that idea, anyways. “You wanna tell me what all of this was about?”

“I, uh.” The issue is, Kate is still unsure if she should tell him about the soulmates thing. She's not 100% sure about it (okay, like 95%, but still) and it _is_ pretty out there as far as ideas go. What if he doesn't believe her? But she doesn't love him (yet?) no matter what she told Sam, and she doesn't want to lie to Steve, anyways, especially not about something that big. And any other words would sound too trivial.

_Like. A. Bandaid._

“IthinkIsortofmightbeyoursoulmate.”

Steve blinks. Kate feels even worse.

“Soulmate?”

She nods. He pales.

And then, he does something completely unexpected.

Steve Rogers throws his head back, and he laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon timeline??? What canon timeline??? 
> 
> Expect to see random adventures from the Fraction Hawkeye comics thrown in willy-nilly, basically.
> 
> Also, Sam and Kate have become buddies that always order enough for both of them to share when they go out to eat (yes even when they're not on the best of terms), Tony is the Most Protective, Clint still doesn't know what retirement means, and Steve will be Explaining Himself in the next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello I return and I bring you the first half of Civil War and a lot of Bucky-feels ENJOY

**July 10th, 1925**

Bucky’s face hurt. Again. And he didn’t know why.  _ Again _ . 

His ma told him that he would figure it out eventually, because he was smart like that. Little Becca thought there was a mean ghost following him around, but then, she was only four.

Bucky hunched his shoulders and winced as pain radiated out from his upper back, like he had been pushed onto the ground or something. Just his luck to be some sort of punching bag for an invisible devil or ghost or whatever.

Sounds of a fight reached Bucky’s ears and he paused for a moment before speeding up. The familiar tightness in his lungs barely even registered as he rounded the corner into an alley and found a boy about his own age beating someone who looked much younger.

“Hey!”

Bucky leapt in without a second thought, swinging hard and fast. The bully turned towards the new target, allowing the blond kid to scramble back, wheezing hard. 

_ One foot back, elbow tight, lead with the first two knuckles _

The bully dropped like a stone at Bucky’s hard hit, following his father’s instructions to the letter. As he lay groaning in the dirt, Bucky turned to the little blond and held out a hand to help him up.

“Are you okay?”

“‘m fine,” the kid mumbled, one eye already starting to purple and swell as he got to his feet on his own. “I had ‘im on the ropes.”

“Sure,” Bucky agreed easily. “But you don’t gotta do it alone, you know. I’m Bucky.”

“Steve,” the kid responded, giving him a wary look. Bucky had a feeling he didn’t get help too often. He started coughing, doubling over from the force of it and gasping for air. The tightness in Bucky’s own lungs increased, but he pushed that aside to focus on his new friend.

“Hey, easy there, pal,” he said, reaching out to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Slow breaths.”

It took a few minutes, but Steve finally got himself under control, sucking in wheezing gasps of air and shaking a little. He looked up at Bucky blearily. “Thanks,” he croaked.

“You’re welcome. D’you live around here?”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded slowly, raising a hand to point out of the alley. “Just over there.”

Ten minutes later, Bucky had Steve sitting in his own apartment with a wet cloth over his eye. Two hours later, Bucky met Sarah Rogers, and had learned that Steve was only about a year younger than him, had just turned seven last week, and was good at getting into fights, but not so good at getting out.

Three years after that, after making an off-hand comment about how he always knew when Steve was in trouble because he could feel the bruises blooming on his pale skin, Sarah sat the boys down and told them an old story about love, the universe, and the matter of souls.

* * *

 

_ Nothing ever dies, not truly. Spirits go on to Heaven, and bodies replenish the earth. Sometimes, spirits get a chance to try again, to come back to Earth as a baby and live another whole life. _

_ And sometimes, not very often but sometimes, two spirits meet up in Heaven and they are absolutely perfect for each other in every way. Each is strong where the other is weak, balance is created in every aspect of themselves. _

_ Because they are in Heaven, though, they cannot truly have a life together – they can’t experience the simple joys of living. So they ask to return to Earth. _

_ Of course, it’s not a precise thing, being born. And what good would it do anyone to be born next door to their perfect match? No one would have room to grow and change and experience things. All those strengths and weaknesses wouldn’t develop. _

_ So God implemented a system for these people, these soulmates. Because our suffering on Earth is our reason for being here, He decided that soulmates could find each other through shared suffering. _

_ The reason you can feel each other’s pain is because, up in Heaven, you matched perfectly – two sides of the same coin. _

_ Simply put, you were made for each other, and you met young, so you have all the time in the world to live your lives. You don’t have to waste time searching for anyone – you already found the most important person in the world.  _

* * *

**June 22nd, 1943**

In the middle of a patrol, Bucky lurched over to the side and threw up in the bushes.

“Whoa, hey, Barnes!” A hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing tightly as he dry-heaved. The inside of his eyelids seemed to be painted a brilliant, dizzying white and his entire body  _ ached _ . He couldn’t even recognize which of the unit was next to him in that moment.

Somebody said something about a fever behind him - that wasn’t it, he was sure. No, Bucky knew, with a horrible sense of certainty, that this pain was all from Steve.

_ What have you gotten yourself into now, punk? _

* * *

Four months later, the 107th is captured by Hydra, and select soldiers are taken in for ‘questioning.’ None come back.

Three weeks in, one Sergeant Barnes is picked out of the crowd for his turn. 

Bucky doesn’t know what they are injecting him with, but it burns. He prays feverently, for the first time, that Steve  _ did _ die all those months ago, in that flash of blinding pain - the last thing Bucky felt from Steve. Because if he is dead, then he cannot be tortured by proxy, cannot be forced to endure the hell that Bucky is living.

Except, a week later, he is rescued by a man who sounds like Steve, fights like Steve, is impulsive like Steve, but built like a goddamn tank. And Bucky has seen quite a few tanks.

And all he’s got, of course, is a ridiculous goddamn  _ shield _ .

Fucking typical.

* * *

Steve tells him everything. The serum, the transformation, the Hydra spy, the months spent as the Army’s personal marionette.

Bucky tells him almost everything. The battles, the skirmishes, the kills, the ambush and capture, the torture. He says nothing about the injections. Just another way to induce pain, he’s sure. No need to worry Steve about it. If he knew, he’d drag Bucky to the nearest medical tent, which is something Bucky has been strictly avoiding since getting his initial injuries treated. 

He doesn’t much like needles, these days.

They can no longer feel each other’s pain. Steve seems a little upset by this - Bucky privately thinks it’s a boon. Steve need never know how truly bad things were at Azzano.

When he falls, when he dies, when he is forced to continue on, his last conscious thought as James Barnes is to be thankful that Steve would never, ever, feel  _ this _ .

* * *

**June 4th, 2017**

Kate's phone rang at an unholy hour for a Sunday morning. She tried to ignore it, but a finger poked her gently.

“Answer the phone.”

“Noooo,” she whined softly. “Sleeping.”

There was a pause, a shifting of blankets and the warm body she had been curled into, and then the ringing was intolerably closer. “It's your dad.”

Kate groaned wordlessly and held out her hand, using muscle memory to answer the phone with her eyes closed and bringing it up to her ear. “What do you want?”

_ “Good morning to you, too.” _

“You woke me up.”

_ “Apologies.” _ He didn't sound very sorry. Derek Bishop never did, though. Kate was privately sure that he was incapable of feeling anything resembling 'sorry.’ 

“Whatever. What’s going on?”

_ “I'm calling because your mother -” _

“Heather,” Kate said icily, suddenly wide awake as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. 

_ “...yes, well, Heather and I are going on a trip in the yacht. I was hoping you would join us.” _

Kate rubbed her temple with her free hand. “No.”

_ “Katie -” _

“No. Go have fun, Dad. But don't ask me again.”

She hung up and set the phone back down on the night stand before letting her head and shoulders drop, curling in on herself where she sat.

A warm hand curled over her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes. No.” She sighed, looking back at Steve. “I'm just… tired.”

His eyes were warm and sympathetic. “Maybe you need to take a break, then.”

It was the fourth time in three weeks that Mr. Bishop had called, and Kate knew that each successive word exchanged only made her stress that much worse. On top of training, mission prep, and carefully navigating this new relationship with Steve, she was running ragged.

It had been almost two years since she had told him about the ‘whole soulmates thing,’ two years since Steve had broken down in semi-hysterical laughter in the garage and had finally gasped out that he had  _ lost _ his soulmate 72 years before, had almost gotten back a  _ ghost _ last year, and now she was standing in front of him, concerned and bewildered in Clint’s favorite bullseye t-shirt, and  _ she was his soulmate _ . Because, in the grand joke of the Universe, Steven Grant Rogers was a terrible, terrible punchline.

And because it was Steve, and he had a bad track record of important people in his life suddenly dying or disappearing or both, and because it was Kate, who was only just barely better than the other Hawkeye in the romance department, they decided to take it slow.

_ Glacially _ slow.

The irony was not lost on Kate.

It had taken nearly a full year before they had gone out on a proper date, just the two of them. It was another four months before they managed a date that  _ wasn’t _ interrupted by a mission or a nearby crime or a well-intentioned but poorly-executed spying attempt by their teammates. (Vision had appeared suddenly out of their table, the wall, the floor, or whatever else they were seated by no less than five times before Sam and Wanda had managed to teach him the fine art of subtlety. He was still working on the concept of ‘private conversations,’ though.)

In any case, it had taken a lot of work to get to this point, to a lazy Sunday morning curled up in Steve’s bed, wearing an oversized custom t-shirt that Tony had gleefully presented her with last Christmas which read  _ ‘Save a Jeep, Ride a Captain!’ _

And it was being messed up by Derek goddamn Bishop.

“A break sounds nice,” she sighed. “But it’ll have to wait - I can’t just bail on you right now.”

“Why? The Lagos mission?” Steve asked. “Kate, it's fine. It's just an intel grab. We don't really need five people on this.”

“But -”

“Kate,” he said, gently but firmly, “You’re not at your best, so I couldn’t expect you to give this mission your best. We’ll be fine - with the new upgrades on Redwing, Sam can keep more of a lookout. Natasha has practically made Wanda her pet project. It will just be a simple mission to get some information and get out again.”

She chewed on her lip as she thought it over. It was true, having five people, especially with one of them being Natasha, was nearly superfluous for the job ahead - her assigned point had just been playing tourist-y Hawkeye in a bell tower near the mark, keeping an eye out for trouble and snapping selfies.

“Okay,” she finally conceeded. “But I am  _ not _ going on that yacht trip with my dad.”

Stave smiled. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. Where are you thinking, then?”

“I dunno,” she said, staring off into the middle distance. “West. Not Colorado, though - maybe California.”

* * *

Clint was in a funk. Though, to be fair, Clint had been in a funk for the past roughly six months. He refused to tell her what was going on, though. All Kate knew was that one of his neighbors, the nice guy who had always organized the weekly rooftop cookouts and whom everyone called Grills, was dead. He’d been murdered - Clint clung onto his lie of retirement, said he was leaving it to the cops. Kate thought that that was supremely unlikely, but she wasn’t about to argue with Clint Barton in a Mood. A self-destructive, push-everyone-who-cares-away Mood.

It was an on-going thing, lately. He had yelled at her a bit a few weeks ago over things that weren’t even close to her fault. She was still kind of mad about it.

She had felt obligated to let him know the situation, and pick up some things she had over at his place. His attitude, combined with her already significant stress, and the anxiety that had started rising as soon as she had left the compound with a duffle bag and her bow, was making her snappish. Kate knew she was being harsh and pushing some of her own problems onto Clint.

That didn’t mean she was able to stop herself, though.

“I gotta get out of here for a little while… Clint?”

“Do what you gotta do.”

“Are you even listening to me? I can’t stick around and watch you do this to yourself. Things are hard, things are terrible, you  _ stick together _ . Real people would stick together. You don’t hole up and shut everybody out.”

“Please, just. Just stop talking. I can’t - where are you taking my stuff?”

“This stuff is my stuff.”

“You had that much stuff over here?”

“...”

“Whatever.”

“I can’t watch you completely lose it anymore, Clint. I can’t just sit here as you throw your life away because you need someone to yell at as it happens. You made a decision to make this place your home, to make these people your family. You can’t just  _ bail _ when it gets hard.”

“So, what? Back to Midtown? Back to Daddy’s?”

“Go to hell.”

“Seriously, that’s  _ my _ quiver.”

“ _ My _ quiver, genius.”

“Well, I put some of  _ myyyy _ arrows in there. Some of the weird ones, so be careful. A remote explosive one, or ten. There’s a little keyfob-jobby thing you - just don’t blow your head off or try taking it on any planes.”

“Got it, great, good. Go screw.”

“But seriously, where are you gonna go?”

“I don’t know. Los Angeles, maybe.”

“ _ Great _ idea. Because the West Coast totally needs a Hawkeye.”

“C’mon, Lucky.”

“Hey -  _ hey!  _ You’re not my girlfriend! You can’t - you can’t just take my  _ dog! _ ... _ Who the hell do you think you are?!” _

* * *

Of course, it’s when she got to LA that everything really and truly went to shit.

No phone, no credit card, no car, a bad cut across the bridge of her nose, a crazed masked murderess after her, crashing in the trailer of two old hippie lesbians who needed a cat-sitter, and pretty much no cash to speak of after buying the cheapest archery set she could find, which was still painfully expensive, but better than the set that had been blown to bits with Clint’s ‘keyfob-jobby’ during her escape from said crazed masked murderess (AKA, nothing at all).

“At least I’ve still got you, right, Lucky?”

“ _ Broof! _ ”

“Good dog.”

* * *

**_You have four new messages._ **

**_First message, received Friday, June 9th, at 8:46 PM, from Unknown. Beeeeep._ **

_ “Hey, Steve, it’s me. Um, I’m in Los Angeles, I got here yesterday afternoon actually, and then sort of lost my phone and… everything else. Which is why I’m calling from a strange number, borrowed the neighbor’s cell. Right, um, I’m staying in a trailer on the beach! It’s really nice - I’m cat- and trailer-sitting for these two old hippie ladies. But, uh, just wanted to let you know that I’m safe, just… out of service? I’ll try to get a phone as soon as possible. If you have a chance though, can you call Marcus and Finch with Tony’s number? I don't have it memorized and could really use a bail out right about now. Thanks. Bye.” _

**_Second message, received Sunday, June 11th, at 11:09 PM, from Unknown. Beeeeep._ **

_ “Hi Steve, me again. Did you guys leave on the mission already? I can’t remember, I think you might have. Either way, I just wanted to let you know that there’s a hospital bill coming to the compound soon - I’m okay, I swear! Just a couple of bruises and a slightly sprained wrist. And it's not even up to us to cover the costs! This asshole hit me with his car because I was following him, trying to get evidence of illegal stuff so that I can help my neighbors and new friends. So his insurance will cover it, but we’re getting like… a no-charge bill for records or whatever.  _ **_And_ ** _ he got arrested for hitting me, and having a gun on him, so score one for Hawkeye, zero for the Weed Lord! _

_ “I really am okay, don’t worry. I’ll be home… soonish. I’m not sure when. I’ve got stuff to sort out here, first.” _

**_Third message, received Wednesday, June 14th, at 3:37 AM, from Unknown. Beeeeep._ **

_ “I fucked up, Steve. I - [sniff] goddamnit, I really fucked this one up. There was this guy, see, and he was my friend in the cat food aisle, and he gave me, like, advice on buying cat food that also applied to my life? We were buddies. And then all sorts of shit went down, and now he’s dead, and the asshole who hit me with his car is out of prison and he’s the one who did it, but I can’t  _ **_prove_ ** _ that, and then they torched the trailer and [sniff] fuck, Steve, it’s so bad. _

_ “They’re trying to kill Clint - there was like, a message sent out to all sorts of villains which basically sums up as ‘kill Clint Barton’ and I just - I don’t know what to do. I can’t leave LA, I can’t even call Clint because I don’t know his damn number. You're the only one on the team who I memorized. I should probably fix that when I get back home. _

_ “If I get back home. _

_ “Everything is so... [sniff] so fucking messed up, Steve. Please help.” _

**_Fourth message, received Saturday, June 17th, at 10:59 PM, from Unknown. Beeeeep._ **

_ “I’m coming back. Finally. Everything got sorted - kind of. Everything is also just… FUBAR.  _

_ “I don’t know. I can’t talk about it over the phone, especially not to a goddamn answering machine. _

_ “Where are you, Steve?” _

**_End of messages. To delete all old messages, press 7._ **

* * *

She heard about the tragedy in Nigeria in a dive bar somewhere in Kansas, where the news was playing on the TV in the corner, dissecting the “deplorable actions of the Avengers” that resulted, once again, in so many deaths.

_ It was just supposed to be an intel grab. What changed? _

“Sickenin’, ain’t it?”

“Huh?”

The scruffy guy sitting a few seats down from her at the bar nodded at the TV as she turned to look at him. “All that. Makes your stomach turn.”

“Those poor people,” she said, not quite in agreement, but not disagreeing. She knew there had to be a reason as for why it went so badly, so quickly, and she wasn’t about to pass judgement until she knew that reason.

The guy scoffed. “Not that. Those fuckin’ Avengers - walkin’ around like they own everything. What’s stoppin’ ‘em from showin’ up here one day and blowin’  _ this _ town up? Or droppin’ Reno County from the sky?” He shook his head. “They’re dangerous. Saved New York, sure, but who’s gonna save us from them?”

Kate quickly paid her tab and left. She needed to get back to New York. She needed to know what was going on. And she needed to save Clint’s ass.

_ Again. _

* * *

She arrived at the compound on Tuesday the 20th, pulling in just ahead of a sleek sports car that could only belong to one person. As soon as the driver’s side door opened, she reached in and pulled out her best friend, both of them ignoring Lucky dancing around their legs.

_ “Tony,” _ she gasped, hugging him tightly.

“Kate,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “What’s going on? I thought you were in California - what happened to your  _ face?” _

“‘s a long story,” she sighed, pulling back enough to look up at him. “What happened in Lagos?”

“Long story, as I understand it,” he sighed. “Secretary, this is Kate Bishop. Kate, this is Thaddeus Ross, Secretary of State.”

Kate fought down the revulsion as she shook Ross’ hand. She’d heard about this man - the one who hunted the Hulk with a passion. “What brings you up here?”

He looked at her half-healed face with interest - none of Tony’s concern, just cold calculation. “Due to recent events, I’m here to negotiate.”

She really,  _ really _ didn’t like the sound of that.

* * *

_ “Vis, we’ve talked about this.” _

_ “Yes, but the door was open, so I assumed that… Captain Rogers wished to know when Mr. Stark was arriving.” _

_ “Thank you. We’ll be right down.” _

_ “I’ll… use the door. Oh, and apparently he’s brought a guest.” _

_ “We know who it is?” _

_ “Miss Bishop is with him… and the Secretary of State.” _

* * *

Steve was the first to enter the conference room after Kate, Tony, and Ross arrived (and Lucky was settled in Kate’s room for a well-deserved nap), but there was no time to fill each other in as the rest of the team filed in and Ross immediately started talking.

“Five years ago, I had a heart attack and dropped, right in the middle of my backswing. Turned out it was the best round of my life, because after 13 hours of surgery and a triple bypass, I found something 40 years in the Army never taught me. Perspective.”

Tony was fidgeting in the corner seat next to Kate, away from the rest of the Avengers at the table. She glanced at him, but his eyes were fixed on Ross. He clearly knew whatever it was that Ross was leading up to… and that some of the team probably wouldn’t like it much.

“The world owes the Avengers an unpayable debt,” Ross continued. “You have fought for us, protected us, risked your lives. But while a great many people see you as heroes, there are some who would prefer the word ‘vigilantes.’”

“And what word would you use, Mr. Secretary?” Natasha asked, all poise.

“How about ‘dangerous?’”

Kate thought back to the scruffy guy in the Kansas bar and furrowed her brows.

“What would you call a group of US-based,  _ enhanced _ individuals, who routinely ignore sovereign borders and inflict  _ their _ will wherever they choose and who, frankly, seem unconcerned about what they leave behind?” he challenged. When there was no answer, he stepped to the side and brought up a display of the world, with choice areas highlighted.

“New York.” Iron Man streaking through the sky, followed by one of the great space-whale monsters. The Hulk, crashing through the upper levels of a building as people screamed on the street below. 

“Washington, D.C.” The three helicarriers, smoking in the sky above the capital. The Tri-Skelion, burning. One of the helicarriers crashing into the Potomac and huge waves washing over panicked civilians.

“Sokovia.” A portion of the city rising above the rest. Buildings crumbling and falling as people ran, scared and innocent in all of it. An Ultron fell past the camera, two arrows sticking out of it's head.

“Lagos.” Smoke pouring out of a building, badly damaged in the explosion. Sirens wailing as the wounded were rushed off, and the dead lay gathering dust.

“Okay,” Steve said firmly. “That’s enough.”

Ross nodded slightly and turned off the video. “For the past four years, you’ve operated with unlimited power, and no supervision. That’s an arrangement the governments of the world can no longer tolerate. But I think we have a solution.”

The aid/bodyguard that had been hovering silently behind Ross the whole time now handed over a thick dossier. Ross set it down on the conference table and slid it over to Wanda.

“The Sokovia Accords.”

* * *

The rest of the team moved into the common area after Ross left, and Kate slipped away after lifting Sam’s phone.

It rang four times before a gruff voice she didn’t recognize picked up.

“ _ What do you want?” _

“Where’s Clint?” she demanded.

_ “Can I take a message?” _

“No,” she snapped. “If you’ve hurt him, I will  _ personally _ put an arrow so far up your ass -”

_ “Calm down, girlie. Clint’s fine. Mostly.” _

“Mostly?!”

_ “There was an attack, we both got caught in it. Clint’s ears are damaged, but he’ll heal.” _

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment, taking in this new information. “Both of you? Who even are you?”

_ “Barney. Clint’s brother. I’ll be okay, eventually.” _

“Clint’s got a brother?”

_ “Kid, why are you calling?” _

“Kate,” she corrected. “I’m calling because Clint’s got a target on his back, but I think you’ve probably figured that out by now.”

_ “No shit.” _

“I’ll be there in a couple hours.”

_ “Much appreciated.” _

The line went dead and Kate swept her hair back from her face, taking a breath. It was always something, wasn’t it? The last dregs of Hydra, an evil robot, a branch of the Russian mafia, Madame Masque and her gang of not-bellboys, an apartment complex under attack from non-specific forces. 

Even taking a vacation wasn’t possible anymore, apparently.

She stepped back out into the common area just in time to see Steve exit. Saying the atmosphere in the room was ‘tense’ would be a gross understatement. 

Kate wanted nothing to do with any of it. She needed to go save the Barton boys and at least apologize to Steve before she left.

“Kate -”

Whatever Tony wanted to say died at his lips as she strode purposefully across the room to the door to the stairwell, where Steve had just vanished. She barely even paused to toss Sam’s phone at him as she passed.

Steve had only gone down half a flight - she could see the top of his head through the railing. He had one arm tucked tight across his chest, his other hand raised to pinch the bridge of his nose, hiding his face.

He was hurting. She didn’t know why. She didn’t need to.

Steve didn’t move as she walked down to stand in front of him, but he wordlessly shifted to pull her close when she wrapped her arms around his waist. Kate laid her head on his chest, listened to his heartbeat, and ignored the tears dropping into her hair. 

He was hurting, but the clock was still ticking.

“I need to get to Clint,” she whispered. “He’s in trouble again. I’m sorry.”

She felt him nod against the top of her head. “I’m getting on the next flight to London. Think you’ll make it?”

“Probably not,” she sighed. “I’ll catch the one after that. Take Sam; don’t be alone.”

“Okay.”

She squeezed him tighter. She had a bad feeling she knew what had happened. “It’s Peggy, isn’t it?”

His arms tightened, not enough to bruise, but almost painful just the same. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.” Kate had only met the legendary Peggy Carter once. Upon being introduced as ‘Steve’s girlfriend,’ Peggy had grinned wickedly at her and started telling every embarrassing story she knew about Steve, both what she had witnessed and what had been retold to her. They had had a great time giggling at Steve’s expense while he blushed in the corner. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

He nodded and let her go. “Be safe.”

“You, too.”

* * *

The area outside of Clint’s apartment was a mess. Kate and Lucky wound their way through cars, small fires, and tracksuited goons who may or may not be alive anymore.

The red car crashed into the front door was vaguely familiar, and the pink haired, tattooed person inside even more so.

“Aimee?” she asked, leaning in to look at the cheery tenant. “Still with us, kid?”

Aimee groaned and looked up. “Heyyy, Hawkeye,” she mumbled. “Welcome home. We beat the bad guys yet?”

“Fixin’ to.”  _ Clint, what happened that you had to get these innocent people involved? _

In the staircase, she found more tracksuited goons trying to dismantle a furniture barricade straight out of a  _ Les Mis _ production. One of them complainingly asked for dynamite. Her exploding arrow was more readily at hand, though.

The resulting  _ boom _ took out the barricade and the surrounding goons. Kate calmly walked through, passing over an arrow to Lucky, who grabbed it and ran up the staircase. It’s a path they’d both tread many times, though never under such dire circumstances.

They win. Barely. Lucky is shot. Kate threatens to shoot the Head Goon with his own gun, and ends up getting him through the hand with an arrow. Clint gets in a fistfight with an assassin, and then also gets shot. Kate gets in a fight with the same assassin, who is then taken down by a freaking  _ coin flipping trick _ from Clint.

Barney vanishes, along with most of Clint's money and one of his tenants and her kids. According to Clint, this is a 'best case scenario,' really.

They’re bloody and battered and the last thing Kate wants to do is get on an international flight when Clint lifts his open hand to his chin, pulling it down and away before putting his index and middle finger up across his forehead.

_ Thanks, Hawkeye. _

* * *

_ “Who else signed?” _

_ “Tony, Rhodey, Vision.” _

_ “Clint?” _

_ “Says he’s retired.” _

_ “...Kate?” _

_ “She and Wanda are both TBD.” _

_ “...” _

_ “I’m off to Vienna for the signing of the Accords. There’s plenty of room on the jet.” _

_ “...” _

_ “Just because it’s the path of least resistance, doesn’t mean it’s the wrong path. Staying together is more important than  _ **_how_ ** _ we stay together.” _

* * *

**June 22nd, 2017**

Kate was really, really tired of hearing about explosions on the news. Especially ones that involved Avengers or will no doubt get Avengers involved. The signing of the Accords, which Natasha had explained more fully to them in Clint’s hospital room before her own flight to London, was violently interrupted, and a manhunt for one James Buchanan Barnes was immediately underway.

They were watching the news on Clint’s couch, owner and dog bandaged heavily and Kate only marginally less so. It was another rerun of the bomb story; that was all anyone was talking about. 

A sudden, wrenching pain in her left shoulder made Kate gasp, and Clint looked over with concern.

“Katie?”

“Steve’s in trouble,” she said, clutching her shoulder tightly as the pain slowly ebbed. “I’d bet good money they found Bucky, and he isn’t happy about it.”

“...and you know this, how?”

_ Shit. _ She had never told Clint about her connection with Steve - first it was too weird, then it was too long past being relevant. It hadn’t even been an issue recently, with the lack of missions.

She wondered suddenly if Steve had been hurt on the Lagos mission, and she just was too busy being personally beaten to a pulp to also feel the proxy.

“If I said ‘cosmic bullshit,’ would you believe me?”

“At this point?” Clint sighed. “Yeah.”

“Then cosmic bullshit pretty much sums it up.”

“Good to know.”

Her new phone beeped a few minutes later.

**_TO: Kate B., 12:31 am_ **

_ Please tell me you’re not in Romania _

**_TO: Tin Can, 12:31 am_ **

_ Still in nyc _

To prove her point, she sent Tony a picture of Clint sprawled on the couch next to her, the glow of New York nighttime visible through the window behind him.

**_TO: Kate B., 12:34 am_ **

_ Good. Stay there.  _

**_TO: Kate B., 12:34 am_ ** **_  
_ **

_ Do I even want to know why Barton looks like he fought a tiger and lost? _

**_TO: Tin Can, 12:35 am_ **

_ Excuse u we kicked ass and won _

**_TO: Kate B., 12:36 am_ **

_ Thought he was retired? _

**_TO: Tin Can, 12:37 am_ **

_ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ _

* * *

_ “Hello, Mr. Barnes. I’ve been sent by the United Nations to evaluate you.” _  
  


_ “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, James.” _  
  


_ “ _ **_Longing… Rusted… Seventeen… Daybreak… Furnace… Nine… Benign… Homecoming… One… Freight Car.”_ **

* * *

Kate jolted awake roughly 10 hours later with a splitting headache and an ache in her left arm.  _ This isn’t gonna be good _ , she thought, rolling off the couch and heading towards the bathroom.

The headache lessened by the time she got there and she bent over the sink to splash some water on her face, but her left hand was starting to seriously hurt. It felt like she’d been punching one-handed all day at the gym. What the hell was Steve doing?

She grimaced as her entire back suddenly flared in pain, as though she had fallen onto it from a height. Kate patted her face dry and walked carefully back over to the couch and picked up her phone.

**_TO: Tin Can, 10:02 am_ **

_ Tony what the hell is going on _

She collapsed back onto the cushions, eyes shut as the pain receded to a background soreness. Her head still hurt, and her left hand felt prickly, like the blood was rushing back after going numb.

**_TO: Tin Can, 10:05 am_ **

_ Tony. Answer me. Please. _

Kate clenched her jaw, back going rigid as immense strain suddenly went through her shoulders and arms. Steve, what the  _ fuck. Are. You. Doing. _

The strain stopped after a few moments, thankfully, but Kate barely had a moment to appreciate it before she was choking on thin air.

**_TO: Tin Can, 10:06 am_ **

_ TONY _

Air returned suddenly, her headache spiked, and Kate slumped back against the cushions, ignoring the wetness in the corner of her eyes.

She took a moment to breathe, then opened up an airline page on her phone. She needed to get to Steve like yesterday. Clint was stable, Steve… Steve clearly was in a bad situation, and she’d be damned if she sat around and did nothing about it.

**_TO: Kate B., 10:17 am_ **

_ Barnes busted out. Cap and Falcon are missing. Stay in NY for the love of all that is important to you. _

She set her jaw, left Tony on read, and scrolled through her options for a flight from JFK to anywhere in central Europe.

“Katie? Why am I getting cryptic texts from Nat to stay in Brooklyn?”

“Steve and Sam are on the run, possibly with Bucky,” she said, eyes never leaving the screen as Clint thumped down the stairs. “The shit has apparently hit the fan in a major way.”

“Cool,” Clint deadpanned as he flicked the coffee machine on. “My favorite way to start any Friday morning.”

“You’re ‘retired,’” Kate said, sitting up fully and turning. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“Excuse you, I’m  _ retired _ , no finger quotes needed,” he scowled at her. “Retired and dead are not the same thing, though.”

“You were damn close to the second a couple days ago.”

“ _ Listen.” _

While Clint scrambled for a response, Kate’s phone beeped.

**_TO: Daisy, 10:20 am_ **

_ Got a pickup for the carrier pigeons - John _

**_TO: *Restricted*, 10:20 am_ **

_ Range? _

**_TO: Daisy, 10:21 am_ **

_ Mrs. Doubtfire and Scent of a Woman _

**_TO: *Restriced*, 10:22 am_ **

_ Understood _

“Who’s John?” Clint asked, looking over her shoulder at the phone screen. “What’s with the old movies? Wait - carrier pigeons?”

“John is Sam, those films are set in San Francisco and upstate New York, respectively, and we’re the pigeons.”

“Why is Sam John?”

“Because we both really liked the last  _ Star Wars _ movie. Come on, we need to get ready.”

“Ready for what?” Clint asked, watching with bewilderment as Kate cleared her flight search and started a new one, this time from NYC to San Francisco. 

“Ready for a fight, I think,” Kate sighed. “Lines are being drawn in the sand, Clint. You gotta pick which beach to be on. I don’t think there’s a way to stay outta this.” She looked up at him, worry shining in her eyes. “I think now is the time to choose sides.”

“What sides?” The coffee machine beeped, but both of them ignored it. By the look on Clint’s face, he knew what she was talking about, he just didn’t want to hear it. 

“Accords or no Accords. Supervision or self-control.” She took a deep breath. “Tony or Steve.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, reading each other’s thoughts plainly. After several moments, Clint nodded. “You wanna hop back to the West Coast or do you want me to do it?”

“Probably best if I avoid California for now,” she said, mouth twisting in a humorless smile. She had told Clint everything once they had gotten back to his apartment after being released from the hospital. “I’ll take the android.”

“He nodded, turned back to the kitchen. “I like aisle seats,” he said. “Easy to get up and go.”

“Will do, Hawkeye.”

“Thanks, Hawkeye.”

* * *

Avoiding the sensors around the perimeter wasn’t  _ easy _ , exactly, but it wasn’t overly challenging - Kate knew where all of them were, and had frequently tested her skills against similar defenses in the training arena.

Setting off the explosion was a piece of cake: one of Clint’s explosive arrows in a tree + a remote detonator = perfect distraction.

Vision would leave. Wanda would stay. Kate would get in, get out, and they would meet Clint and Sam’s ‘bug guy’ at the airport and run to catch their next flight, which was a military transport that Clint had called in a few favors to secure. 

Wanda, of course, was on edge, so maybe sneaking up behind her in the dark wasn’t the best idea, but in Kate’s defense, she hadn’t wanted to alert Vision to her presence.

Still, the knife flying through the air to point at her forehead wasn’t greatly appreciated.

“My bad. Shoulda knocked.” she said, knocking the knife aside.

“Oh, my god,” Wanda said, walking forward. “What are you doing here?”

“Living up to my namesake,” Kate said, brushing past Wanda and knocking an arrow. She fired it onto the wall, then another into the counter opposite. “You know, I could be on a yacht somewhere in the South Pacific right now?” A humanoid figure was approaching the window, and Kate grabbed Wanda’s arm to usher her away. “Cap needs our help. Come on.”

“Kate!”

_ Too late. _

“You should not be here.”

“Really?” Kate asked, stopping and turning to face Vision. “I take a week’s vacation and it all goes to shit. Also, like, I live here.”

“Please consider the consequences of your actions,” Vision warned, drifting closer.

“Okay,” she agreed pleasantly. “They’re considered.”

Vision came between her two arrows, activating the electrical field and stopping dead. 

“C’mon, won’t last long,” she said, turning back around and taking Wanda’s hand, intending to bolt for the exit. However, Wanda refused to move. “Wanda, we’ve gotta go.”

“I’ve caused enough problems,” she said, looking down and toying with the hem of her sleeve.

Kate sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “Listen, you gotta work with me here. Things are…  _ astronomically  _ bad out there right now. If you really want to feel better, I suggest my tried-and-true method of mission therapy. It’s like retail therapy, but with more punching.”

Movement in the corner of her eye grabbed Kate’s attention, and she looked up in time to see Vision turn his head fully to one of the arrows.

“ _ Shit.” _

The arrow exploded in a burst of yellow and blue, and Kate got off one shot that went straight through Vision’s shoulder before being thrown backwards.

“I knew I should’ve taken bug guy,” she muttered, pulling out a collapsible baton from the bottom of her quiver. This was going to hurt - even when Vision was being gentle in training sessions, he was a true heavyweight fighter.

Most of her blows went straight through him - the ones he allowed her to land definitely hurt her more than him, and her baton broken across his face before he grabbed her in a headlock.

“Kate. You can’t overpower me.”

“Well aware,” she grunted, trying to gain enough leverage to comfortably breathe. “She can, though.”

Wanda was trembling slightly, but Kate knew the look in her eyes - the same one she had seen on the streets of Sokovia, as Ultrons were ripped apart by red mist, the same one she had seen in the training room, when Wanda was finally allowed to do a no-holds-barred training simulation.

That look meant that Wanda was really feeling the power coursing through her, and she was going to  _ use _ it.

“Vision,” Wanda said, drawing up a ball of energy in her hands. “That’s enough, let her go. I’m leaving.”

“I can’t let you.”

The Mind Stone glowed red, and Vision’s arms were suddenly intangible. Kate dropped from his grasp and took a full breath, watching from the floor as Wanda forced Vision down.

“If you do this,” he warned, dropping to his knees. “They will never stop being afraid of you.”

“I can’t control their fear,” Wanda declared. “Only my own.”

Vision plummeted through the floor - through all the floors - and Kate got to her feet, joining Wanda at the edge of the hole.

“Whoa,” she said lowly, surveying the damage before looking up at the other. “C’mon, we’ve got friends to meet.”

* * *

“Seriously, Clint, where did you even  _ get _ a pedophile van?”

“For the last time, it is  _ not _ -”

“Shut up,” Wanda said sternly, cutting both Hawkeyes off as she peered out the front window of the white, unmarked work van. “They’re here.”

The old fashioned blue Beetle pulled in a few spaces away from the not-pedophile van, and Steve got out of the driver’s seat as Kate opened the passenger door.

“Steve -”

“Kate -”

They met in the middle, clutching each other tightly. It felt like so much longer than a few days since they had last been close enough to touch. Kate pressed her face into his chest (his shirt smelled  _ horrible _ what had he been doing?) for a long moment before looking up and pulling him down for a kiss.

He didn’t taste great, either. She didn’t mind. Too much.

They broke for air, but Kate kept her hands on his face, keeping him close. “You need a shower,” she muttered. “And toothpaste.”

“Missed you, too.” He smiled at her and pulled away just enough to acknowledge the other people present, who were mostly standing around awkwardly.

“Clint,” Steve said, reaching out to shake his hand. “You know I wouldn’t have called if I had any other choice.”

“Hey man, you’re doing me a favor,” Clint said lightly as they shook hands. He was mostly healed up - his face wasn’t obviously bashed in anymore, at least, and he was out of the sling (a bit early, but who was Kate to judge? She’d ditched her own sling in LA almost immediately). “Besides, I owe a debt.”

Steve nodded and looked over to Wanda. “Thanks for having my back.”

“It was time to try a new method,” she said dryly, exchanging a look with Kate.

“How about our other recruit?”

“He’s rarin’ to go,” Clint snarked, turning to open the side door of the van. “Had to put a little coffee in him, but…”

The door opened with a loud clunk, startling the man who was sleeping on the back bench fully awake.

“He should be good.” Clint finished. Sam walked up to stand next to Steve and Kate, looking unimpressed with his own idea.

“Ugh, what time zone is this,” Scott complained as he climbed out of the van. He looked away from Clint, saw Kate standing with Steve and Sam, and did a tiny double take as his eyes widened comically.

“Come on, come on,” Clint said, ushering him forward.

“Captain America!” Scott said, shaking Steve’s hand vigorously.

“Mr. Lang.”

“It’s an honor,” Scott said, looking down and then back up. “I’m shaking your hand too long.” He let go and took a good look at everyone else. “Wow. This is awesome!” He looked back at Steve and lightly pushed his chest. Kate rolled her eyes. “Jeeze. Ah, look, I wanna say, I know you know a lot of super people, so thinks for thanking of me!” 

Sam nudged Kate, and she nudged him back, trying to hide her smile. Scott was even more bumbling than Clint before coffee.

“Hey, man!” Scott said, turning suddenly to Sam.

“What’s up, Tic-Tac,” Sam said evenly, nodding to him.

“Uh, good to see you. Look, what happened last time when I -”

“It was a great audition,” Sam cut in swiftly, “But it’ll never happen again.”

“They tell you what we’re up against?” Steve asked, drawing Scott’s attention back to the present.

“Something about some… psycho-assassins?”

Kate rolled her eyes again. Scott, it had turned out, fell asleep easily while in any sort of transport - trains, planes, automobiles, and suspicious white vans.

“We’re outside the law on this one,” Steve said heavily. “So if you come with us, you’re a wanted man.”

“Yeah, well, what else is new?”

“We should get moving.”

Kate turned as a voice she didn’t know spoke. Bucky was on the opposite side of the little car, looking even more haggard than Steve. He met her gaze evenly, and she wondered if he knew who she was.

“We’ve got a chopper lined up,” Clint announced. Unlike Scott, he hadn’t slept on the flight over.

Alarms started blaring and announcements in German echoed through the parking deck.

“They’re evacuating the airport,” Bucky reported.

“Stark,” Sam said grimly.

“Stark?” Scott questioned, looking alarmed.

Steve gave him a hard look. “Suit up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if this feels rushed or jumpy - I had a lot of information and scenes I wanted to include, and I try to limit myself to about 20-25 Google Drive pages per chapter. Plus, this is the natural stopping point. Hey, airport fistfight to look forward to next chapter! And Peter!!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back! finally! with the conclusion of CW!
> 
> i think it's important that you all know that, in my head, i kept referring to this chapter as 'cheating my way through a massive fight scene by only focusing on my two (2) babies, and making my unreliable narrator even MORE unreliable' aka Pulling a Tolkien
> 
> shout out to sergeant-angel for the coffee inspiration (finger guns my way out of the room)

“Suit up, he says,” Kate grumbled, balancing on one foot as she tried to lace up her other boot without falling over. “ _ Suit up _ . In the middle of a fucking parking deck of a goddamn German airport.”

“Could be worse,” Wanda said dryly, shrugging into her red leather coat. “Could be Nazi Germany.”

“They didn’t have parking decks back then,” she shot back, finally managing to get her boot tied. She slung her quiver over her shoulder and put on her sunglasses. “Besides, haven’t you heard? All the Nazis are in America, now.”

“Which is a problem for next week,” Steve said, coming around the back of the van to check on them. He was in the full Captain America uniform, helmet dangling loosely from his hand. “Ready?”

“I won’t say I was born ready, because that’s ridiculous, but yes, Cap’n, we’re good to go,” Kate said, giving him a lazy salute just to make him roll his eyes.

“Wanda and Clint are going up,” he said as the others gathered around. “Find a vantage point, and be ready to drop in at any moment. Sam, Bucky, you two are going inside - stay covered. It’s Bucky they’re after, and we’re not gonna let that happen. Sam, use Redwing, look for the Quinjet.”

The two old friends locked eyes, and Bucky gave a short nod before turning and walking off, Sam on his heels. Clint briefly clapped Kate on the shoulder before also leaving, Wanda behind him.

“And us, mighty leader?” Kate asked, gesturing between herself and Scott.

“You’re with me,” Steve said, buckling his helmet into place and pulling the shield off of his back, ready to go. “Our first goal is to end this without fighting, and Tony might actually listen to you. Lang, you’re backup. Sam says you shrink?”

“Yes!” Scott said eagerly.

“Their first move is going to be to take my shield if possible,” Steve said. “You’re going to be a hitchhiker.”

Scott nodded enthusiastically, squeezed his hands into fists, and apparently disappeared.

_ “I’m in position!” _ he reported over the comms a few moments later.

“I’m flattered that you have such a high opinion of me,” Kate said as they headed for the exit. “Talking this out and all. But please remember that this is Tony we’re talking about, and I am a far cry from Pepper Potts.”

Steve smiled slightly, but stayed quiet. They didn’t speak as they found their way to the tarmac, Clint’s helicopter in view, breaking into a light jog as they reached the open air, more out of hope than anything else.

Sure enough, as they neared the chopper, a projectile whizzed through the air and shorted out its systems as soon as it made contact.

They both slowed to a stop and looked up, unsurprised to see two suits in the sky. Tony and Rhodey flew down and landed between them and the chopper.

“Wow,” Tony said flatly. “It’s so weird how you run into people at the airport.” The entire head of the Iron Man armor peeled back, allowing him to look around freely. There was a nasty bruise around his right eye - Kate hadn’t heard about that. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Definitely weird,” Rhodey answered, staying completely covered.

“Hear me out, Tony,” Steve started, but stopped short as Tony held up one finger.

“Gonna stop you right there,” he said, before turning his attention away from Steve entirely. “Katherine. I thought I told you to stay in New York.”

“Anthony,” she returned. “I thought you were my friend, not my father.”

He winced and nodded. “Okay, I deserved that. But really, Kate, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be playing nursemaid with Barton and his mutt?”

“Clint’s lasted most of his life without me, somehow,” she said dryly, ignoring the mumbled complaint in her ear. “This seemed more important.”

Tony sighed heavily. “Come on, can’t we discuss this like civilized people over coffee or something?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You brought coffee?”

“Well… no. But we can go get some!” He gestured broadly at the world outside of the airport. “I don’t exactly have a cupholder in this thing.”

“Seems like a serious design flaw.”

“Listen!” Steve said, breaking into their conversation impatiently. “That doctor, the psychiatrist, he’s behind all of this.”

There was a faint  _ clunk _ of metal hitting metal, and they all turned in time to see the Black Panther landing on the pavement to the right.

“Captain,” he said lowly.

“Your Highness.”

“Kate, King T’Challa,” Tony introduced flippantly. “Your Majesty, Kate Bishop, another spoiled rich kid.”

Kate nodded at him, but T’Challa didn’t seem to notice.

“Anyway,” Tony continued. “Ross gave me 36 hours to bring in Rogers, Wilson, and Barnes. Kate, I don’t want to add you to that list, but I will if I have to. 24 hours have already elapsed. Can you help a brother out?”

“You’re after the wrong guy,” Steve insisted.

“Your judgement is askew,” Tony said icily. “Your old war buddy killed innocent people yesterday -”

“And there are five more supersoldiers just like him! I can’t let the doctor find them first, Tony. I can’t.”

“Steve.” They both turned together, finding Natasha standing behind them. They were officially being circled, now. “You know what’s about to happen. Do you really want to punch your way out of this one?”

Steve’s jaw worked slightly but he remained silent as he turned back to Tony. Kate spared a second longer to watch Natasha, who didn’t look very eager about the upcoming fight.

Kate understood. She didn’t want to fight her friends, either. Not like this.

“Alright, I’ve run out of patience,” Tony sighed, cupping his hands around his mouth and calling upwards. “Underoos!”

Kate barely had time to think  _ ‘the fuck does that -’ _ before something attached to Steve’s shield and it was ripped away from him, his hands were suddenly bound, and a figure in red and blue was crouching on top of a nearby truck, shield in hand.

“Nice job, kid,” Tony said casually, even as Steve and Kate eyed the newcomer with confusion.

“Thanks!” he responded, voice squeaking a little and  _ oh my god Tony had found an actual kid for this _ . “Well, I could have stuck the landing a little better, it’s just, new suit - well, it’s nothing, Mr. Stark!” he hastened to correct himself. “It’s perfect, thank you!”

“Yeah, we don’t really need to start a conversation.”

“Tony!” Kate called over, furious. “What the  _ hell _ is a twelve-year-old doing here?!”

“I’m not -!”

“He’s not twelve!”

“I’m Spider-Man!” the kid continued, as though that was supposed to prove that he was an adult. Kate had her doubts about if he was even old enough to drive, and Tony had brought him  _ here _ ? To what was definitely going to turn into a super brawl?

Kate opened her mouth to start really chewing Tony out (how  _ dare _ he recruit a middle schooler for something like this? After giving her an earful after the whole Ultron incident about  _ her _ safety and relative youth? Also, once again,  _ super brawl imminent _ ), but Steve cut her off.

“You’ve been busy.”

“And you’ve been a complete idiot,” Tony shot back. “Dragging in Kate,  _ and _ Clint, who should probably still be in a hospital bed; ‘rescuing’ Wanda from a place she doesn’t even want to leave, a  _ safe _ place! I’m trying to keep -!” He stopped, took a frustrated breath. “I’m trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart.”

“You did that when you signed,” Steve said.

“Alright, we’re done,” Tony said, temper rising with his volume. “You’re gonna turn Barnes over, you’re gonna come with us,  _ now. _ Because it’s us, or a squad of JSOC guys with no compunctions about being impolite!”

Steve looked down, then over at Kate, who met his gaze evenly through her sunglasses.

Lines in the sand.

_ “We found it.” _ Sam suddenly spoke over their comms.  _ “The Quinjet’s in Hanger Five, north runway.” _

Kate and Steve both looked back towards Tony and Steve raised his bound hands. Clint’s arrow cut through easily.

Kate thought she saw hurt on Tony’s face before he turned away and called up the helmet.

“You’re up, Lang.”

“Guys, something’s -  _ ahh!” _

Spider-Man went head-over-heels as Scott kicked him squarely in the jaw halfway through his growth sequence, shield in hand.

“I believe this is yours, Captain America!” Scott said, jogging over and handing it back to Steve.

Tony lifted off, clearly giving instructions over their own internal comms, but switching to speaker before heading off. “Rhodey, you wanna take Cap?”

Rhodey didn’t respond outwardly as he also took to the air, but T’Challa turned at a dead sprint. “Barnes is mine!” he called.

Steve threw his shield at Rhodey even as Kate snapped open her bow and nocked an arrow, eyeing the new kid.

“Hey, Mr. Stark? What should I do?” he asked, one finger to his ear. “Okay, copy that!” He started to run, and Kate fired. “Hey!”

He dodged the arrow, but it threw off his own aim, and the white goo he was shooting from his wrists (spiders - webbing? Probably.) fell to the side.

“Kid, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of this,” she said, drawing another putty arrow.

“I’m not a kid!”

“Can you legally get a drink?”

“Well, no, but -”

“Then you’re a kid, and I’m telling you, stay on the bench!” She loosed the arrow, and he dodged, firing back. Kate dropped and rolled, missing the webbing by a hair, but by the time she got to her knees, Spider-Man was swinging away.

“Falcon, Soldier,” she said, activating her own comm. “You’ve got incoming.”

_ “What kind of - what the hell is that?!” _

_ “Everyone’s got a gimmick now.” _

She left them to it - two war veterans with flight and super strength on their side? Surely they could handle a kid in a onesie.

Scott, however, Scott definitely needed help, judging by how he had vanished again and Natasha was running to the side.

“Lang, you copy?” Kate asked, jogging over to where he had been last. “Lang? Ant-Man?”

_ “Don’t - don’t take another step!” _

She stopped dead and looked down, picking out the tiny red and black form laying on the pavement. “Taking a nap?”

_ “Shut up, Hawkeye. And stand back.” _

She stepped backwards, and Scott returned to his normal size, popping off the front part of his mask to give her a dirty look. “And where were you a minute ago?”

“Going after the Spiderlette. You?” she asked, rolling her shoulders as an ache built up. Steve must have taken a hard hit.

“Going after the real deal! Ow,” he complained, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I  _ did _ try to tell you to leave Natasha to one of us.” Scott had, unfortunately, only listened to about 5% of the briefing on the plane, and was also far too confident for his own good.

“Shut up.” He nodded at something behind her. “We should probably do something about that.”

Kate turned and saw Steve holding his own against the Black Panther and War Machine. “Yeah, you get right on butting into the middle of  _ that _ . I’m going after the Widow.”

She turned and sprinted after Natasha, who was seemingly trying to get an angle on Steve, which just wouldn’t do.

_ Hawkeye chasing the Black Widow. I’m feeling some generational deja vu, here. _

Natasha stopped, about even with T’Challa, and Kate jumped up to kneel on the hood of a baggage cart a dozen feet away, arrow nocked and drawn as Rhodey crashed to the ground between Natasha and T’Challa.

“Cap, heads up!” Scott called somewhere behind them. Kate didn’t turn to look, but she saw Nat’s eyes widen before the assassin dove to the side, out of the way, and -

**_B O O M_ **

* * *

Kate blinked hazily as she woke. Everything seemed very dark. Was she going blind?

No, she realized, not blind. Smokey. There was a layer of smoke between her and the sky - she could smell it now, acrid and chemical, and feel the heat. Something was on fire.

Odd.

There was a metallic clank, one she felt she should recognize.

“Is  _ this _ part of the plan?” a furious voice asked. Natasha. Why was Natasha so angry? Had Kate blown something up again? Or Clint? It was probably Clint.

“Well, my plan  _ was _ go easy on them, you wanna switch it up?” That sounded like Tony. Tony + explosions… was he in the suit? That might explain the clunking noise…

Kate sat up slowly, feeling a little sick. She didn’t see Natasha or Tony - they must be behind her.

There was a crackling noise in her ear. “ _...wkeye!” _

_ “What do… ou mean…  _ **_lost_ ** _ Ha...eye?” _

_ “Ka… issing? ...tter fucking f… her or ...oot you mys… Lang!” _

Broken comm? Must be.

_ God _ her head hurt something fierce.

_ “G...ing back!” _

_ “Cap… ure she’s… gotta g… ow!” _

_ “F...k off!” _

She felt like her headache would probably improve if people stopped shouting in her ear.

_ “I see… eet you there.” _

There was a person in front of her. She blinked several times, and they clarified into Bucky Barnes.

“C’mon, Hawkeye,” he said quietly, holding out his right hand. “We gotta move.”

Kate frowned. “I don’t… I don’t think I can.” She felt wobbly enough just sitting still, the idea of actually standing up and walking or, god forbid,  _ running _ somewhere was nauseating.

“Fuck,” Bucky swore softly, before dropping to one knee without warning and scooping her up in a bridal carry. “Hang on to me, okay? Stevie’d kill me if anything happened to you.”

She closed her eyes to block out the blurry sight of various airport vehicles going past them as Bucky ran. Airport? Right, airport, Germany, fighting. Right. Keep Bucky safe, that was the goal.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Kate protested, pressing her nose against the shoulder of Bucky’s tac vest. “You’re his first soulmate.”

“How d’you - wait,  _ first?” _

Kate breathed slowly through her nose, fighting down nausea. It really wouldn’t do to be sick all over herself and Bucky in the middle of a fight.

The comm crackled in her ear again.

_ “Bu… ave her?” _

“I’ve got ‘er,” Bucky grunted. “We’re right behind you.”

_ “...e okay?” _

“Singed,” he said flatly. “And bruised. Might be concussed, too.”

Concussed? Who was concussed?

Wait.

Oh.

“‘m fine,” she protested, squinting up at Bucky’s face. The line of his jaw tightened, as though he was trying hard to hold back something. A retort, maybe? A scolding? Probably a scolding. She got a lot of those, especially when it came to her personal safety.

There was another person next to them now - she recognized that gear (and the white strands stuck to his back and arms seemed familiar, too). Sam.

A distant yell - was that Steve? - and Bucky and Sam changed direction slightly, and now they were running with several other people, and Kate’s eyes latched onto one in particular. Even concussed, she’d know that blue-clad butt anywhere. Definitely Steve.

A figure in black ran past, quiver secure on their back and bow in hand. Clint, pouring on speed and wasting energy that he probably couldn’t afford to waste to run next to Steve, no doubt thinking to protect her and Wanda.

Speaking of, that red jacket just behind Clint was unmistakable. She glanced over, giving Kate a worried look, and Kate could only hope the smile she gave in return didn’t look too pained.

There was a sixth person, running on the other side of Wanda and Sam, dressed in a vaguely steampunk suit. She felt like she should probably know that person’s name, but it wasn’t coming to her at the moment. Something to do with ants? No, that was his ‘hero name’ or whatever.

A bright light pulsed ahead of them, accompanied by a high-pitched whine, and the entire group skidded to a stop. Bucky’s arms tightened slightly around Kate as he tensed himself for a continuing fight.

“Captain Rogers.” Vision. When did Vision get here? Last Kate had seen, Wanda had been forcing him through to the center of the Earth.

Well, that  _ had _ been almost a full day ago, at this point.

“I know you believe what you’re doing is right,” Vision continued, and there was the hum of repulsor boots coming in for a landing. Tony or Rhodey? Kate squinted past Steve to see a glint of gold and red. Tony, with Natasha next to him. “But for the collective good, you must surrender now.”

Another repulsor hum, and the clack of metal hitting concrete as Rhodey flew in with the Cat Guy, Spider… Spider-Kid? swinging in behind them.

She really needed to figure out names at some point.

Kate nudged Bucky with her elbow as their opponents (friends, mentors, teammates) lined up across from them. He looked down, something wordless passing between them when their eyes met, and nodded, carefully letting her legs drop so that she could support herself.

She swayed as she stood, Wanda moving up to steady her as Bucky took his place at Steve’s side.

“What do we do, Cap?” Sam asked quietly.

“We fight.”

Steve strode forward purposefully, Clint and Bucky shoulder to shoulder with him, Sam and the (what is his fucking  _ name? _ ) Ant-Guy keeping the line beyond Clint. Behind them, Wanda slipped her hand into Kate’s.

“Stay close to me,” she murmured.

“I will.” Kate was well aware that she was in no shape to look after herself in this sort of fight - even though Tony and the others didn’t want to hurt them, that didn’t mean that she could go solo with a concussion that was making her forget the new players’ names.

Wanda squeezed her hand as they picked up speed, a jolt of energy racing up Kate’s arm and clearing her head slightly, making it easier to move. She squeezed back in silent thanks.

Wanda let go of Kate’s hand, trusting the energy she had loaned out would be enough to keep her going, and leapt into the air, using her powers to keep herself up as the two group neared each other.

The clash was… chaotic. As soon as Wanda landed, Kate was by her side, shooting arrows in tandem with Clint. Most of the fighters paired off quickly, including Natasha running over to tackle Clint, rolling away from the girls.

The Spider-Kid swung by, and as Wanda turned to help Clint, Kate loosed an arrow.

He jerked his leg out of the way just in time, letting it fall and stick to the ground. “Leave me alone!”

“Why would I do that?” she asked, dancing backwards to avoid his return shot.

“Aren’t you hurt or something?” he complained, dodging another arrow. “Go lay down and take some Tylenol!”

A blessedly familiar sight, then - Steve’s shield soaring through the air. Not so blessed was watching it slice through the kid’s web while he was busy with Kate. He fell onto a baggage loading ramp,  _ hard _ , and Kate turned to glare at Steve.

“Be careful,” she chided, even as he ran over to her, catching the returning shield almost as an afterthought. “He’s just a baby.”

“Are you okay?” Steve asked instead, running a careful hand over the back of her head, frowning when she winced at the tenderness.

“I’m fine. Steve -”

“That thing does not obey the laws of physics at all,” Spider-Kid complained, moving to a crouched position on the loader and gesturing vaguely at the shield.

“Look, kid,” Steve said, moving slightly as though trying to block Kate from view. “There’s a lot going on here that you don’t understand.”

“Mr. Stark said you’d say that,” he responded, almost cheerfully. “Wow.” He flung his arm out and Steve raised the shield in front of himself and Kate. The webbing hit the shield, and a second shot hit his ankle. A quick yank, and Steve was sliding across the ground, shield acting as a springboard for Spidey to flip over him and land next to Kate.

“He also said to go for your legs!” he called before turning to Kate. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, somehow managing to convey his concerned expression through the mask.

“Go home, then,” she frowned at him, subtly adjusting her grip on her bow.

“Can’t do that. Maybe you can just surrender?”

Kate barked a short laugh, swinging her bow up towards his shoulder. “Surrender?  _ Me _ ? Do you ever know who I am?”

He shrugged as he blocked her hits. “Not really. The magic girl’s girlfriend? You were holding hands earlier.”

Kate snorted and kept swinging.

They traded a few more blows, halfheartedly. Neither wanted to harm the other, not really, and as Kate saw Steve grab the shield and start towards them, she shook her head.

“Go help the others!” she yelled. “I’ve got bug boy.”

“ _ Hey!” _ Spidey pushed her a bit harder at that, sending her back a few paces as he flipped up to stick to the boarding tunnel above them. “Spiders are  _ not _ bugs. They’re arachnids.”

Kate switched back to firing arrows easily. “Yeah, but I like the - the -” She frowned as she struggled to come up with the word, head throbbing. “They both start with b?”

“Alliteration?”

“That’s it.”

Spidey laughed as he swung out to the side, twisting at the last moment and covering the top of her quiver with webbing. “I like alliteration, too.”

“That was a cheap shot,” she complained, pulling fruitlessly at the webbing.

“Yeah,” he agreed easily. “So’s this.”

Another shot of webbing, and her hand was now stuck to the top of her quiver, too. Before she could even begin to complain about that, her other hand was stuck to her bow and her feet were webbed to the ground.

“Not cool, kid!” she yelled as he swung away. “Not  _ fucking _ cool!”

_ “We… tta go.” _ Her comm crackled unpleasantly in her ear.  _ “…probably… ibera by now.” _

_ “T… out the… lyers. I’ll… Vision, you… jet.” _

_ “No! You… t to the… both of … rest of us… etting out of here.” _

_ “As much… hate to ad… gonna win this… ome of us… lose…” _

Kate frowned as she struggled to free herself. An over-enthusiastic wiggle, however, sent her flailing backward to land on her ass, feet and hands still firmly stuck.

_ “...isn’t the… eal fight, Ste…” _

_ “Alrigh… m, what’s… play?” _

_ “...need a divers… omething big.” _

_ “I got… inda big… can’t hold… y long.” _

Damnit, what was  _ happening _ ? The gate she had fought the Spider-Kid by was a short distance from the others, and between the debris and her broken comm, it was difficult to determine what was going on.

_ “On… ignal, run li… tear myself… don’t come… k for me.” _

_ “He’s… tear… in half?” _

_ “...ure about… Scott?” _

Scott? Oh! Right! That was Ant-Man’s name! She was glad to have sorted that out before they met face-to-face again.

_ “…do it all… ime! I… nce, in… lab. And… ssed out.” _

There was a burst of static, and Kate winced as it redoubled the throbbing in her head. When her eyes opened again, she suddenly got the gist of Scott’s plan.

He was, well, a giant, holding on to one of Rhodey’s legs like a kid with a toy.

_ “…guess that… signal.” _

_ “Way… o, Tic-Tac!” _

After the initial shock, everyone burst into motion again. Kate could hear the crunching of metal from where she sat, watching as Scott moved deliberately, slowly, conscious of his now enormous mass.

There was a stuttery beeping from her comm, and Kate squirmed, pressing her ear awkwardly against her shoulder. “Hawkeye.”

_ “Kate.” _ The one word came through loud and clear.

“Steve,” she said. “Where are you?”

_ “Kate? K… do… ou read?” _

Shit. Broken comm.

“I’m here,” she said desperately. “Steve, I’m here, what is it?”

_ “Ka… if you can… me, I’m… y, so sor…” _

“Sorry?” she repeated desperately. “Sorry for what? Steve?”

_ “I… ve you.” _

There was a horrible sound, the squeal of twisting metal and something very heavy falling under its own weight. Kate twisted, looking over and feeling her heart in her throat at the sight of the air control tower being held up by nothing more than Wanda’s will.

Wanda, who was without backup because Kate had gone after the stupid kid.

Two figures - and they had to be Steve and Bucky, because what was the point of all of this if those two didn’t get away, didn’t have a chance to stop the doctor? - ran under the tower just as the red glow of Wanda’s magic disappeared and her scream echoed over the tarmac.

The ground shook, and she looked back to see that Scott’s giant form had disappeared. Fallen? That would explain the minor earthquake.

The Quinjet took off, slowly gaining altitude, first one, then two, and finally three figures soaring after it.

She watched in numb horror as a bolt of yellow energy came from the ground, and the one with wings dodged, and the one in silver fell, and the jet flew off, unimpeded, as Sam and Tony both tried to catch Rhodey, and failed.

Sirens wailed in the distance, and Kate bowed her head. No one was supposed to get hurt - no one was supposed to  _ die. _

“Hey.”

She looked up, seeing the Spider-Kid standing a dozen feet away, holding his ribs, mask rolled up slightly to expose his neck and swaying a little where he stood.

“Should have gone home,” she said heavily. “You should have never even left in the first place, Spidey.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, limping closer. “Probably.”

“Sit down before you pass out.”

That was how the paramedics and the authorities found them, not too long after; sitting under the boarding tunnel in silence. Spidey pulled a vial of solvent from somewhere when the officers approached with handcuffs, finally freeing Kate, who immediately reached up to hold her head.

“She’s got a concussion,” Spidey said. “At the very least.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

The paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher and strapped a neck brace on as the officers cuffed her to the railings. They lifted her up, and Kate saw Spidey still standing a few feet away, watching them load her up.

She gave him a small smile. “Hey, kid?”

He took a hesitant step closer.

“You did good.”

Though his face was still covered, she could easily read the shock there as they wheeled her away.

* * *

_ “What’s gonna happen to your friends?” _

_ “...whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.” _

_ "I don’t know if I’m worth all this, Steve.” _

_ “What you did all those years… it wasn’t you. You didn’t have a choice.” _

_ “I know. But I did it.” _

* * *

The medical wing of the Raft was, well, stark. Whites and greys, barely any curtains for privacy, let alone walls. She was cuffed to the bed, on an IV, and staring at the bland ceiling when he finally walked in.

“Katherine.”

“...Anthony.”

He walked closer, and Kate saw his shoulders drop with relief. “You okay, baby bird?”

“Told you not to call me that,” she said, mustering up a lighthearted glare, though it softened almost instantly. “How’s Rhodey?”

“He’ll live,” he said grimly. “They’re flying him to Colombia Medical tomorrow. We’ll find out what they can do for him then.”

Kate closed her eyes, breathing out slowly through her nose. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

“I know.”

“...what about the ten year old you recruited?”

“Spider-Man?” Tony clarified. “He’s fine. He’s flying back to the States tomorrow with Happy, and then he’s gonna lay low for a few days in a safe house before going home.”

“Why?”

“His cover story is that he’s been invited to a Stark Science Program retreat,” Tony shrugged. “Wouldn’t make sense to send him home after one day.”

Kate sighed. “Tony, leave him out of anything that might happen in the future, okay?”

“I know,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I was running out of options, though.”

She turned her head slightly, looking away.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“Me, too.”

He placed one hand on her shoulder. “You won’t be here forever, Kate. I promise.”

She looked back, giving him a tired smile. “You should go talk to Sam.”

“What -?”

“He was with Steve the whole time,” she murmured. “Whatever you’re here for… just go talk to Sam.”

He squeezed her shoulder, nodded, and walked out.

* * *

A few hours later, when she was aching all over from another beating Steve was taking (and she hoped that it wasn’t Tony on the other end, she hoped that it was simply Steve and Bucky and Tony fighting together against the Winter Soldier copies), she couldn’t hold back a shriek of pain as her left arm flared in pain unlike anything before; like her bones had turned to magma within her skin.

It went completely numb a moment later, which was almost worse, and Kate felt her tears roll down her face and into her hair as she stared up at the ceiling and clung to any scrap of hope she could find.

* * *

A day after their arrival to the Raft, Kate was moved to a normal cell (well, normal for this facility) in the same block as the others. It was a small, circular area, and she could see everyone except Sam, who was directly next to her.

Clint signed to her through the glass and bars - simple things, asking about her head and if she thought Lucky was okay. It was mostly meant as a distraction, and practice. Her ASL was miles better then it had been in the beginning, but she still was nowhere near Clint’s level.

Her head was aching, but her shoulder was worse. She didn't tell Clint that. Lucky was probably fine - they had left him with Aimee and her girlfriend before rushing off (god, had it really only been three days ago? It felt like a lifetime).

She didn't mention Tony. Clint was quick to anger, and slow to forgiveness - it would probably be a long time yet before he would drop the grudge he no doubt held against her oldest friend.

It was only two days after she was put in the cell that she left it again.

* * *

 

**June 27th, 2017**

Wakanda is beautiful this time of year. It's probably beautiful every time of year, but she has nothing to compare it against right now.

She focuses on the fog rolling over the canopy, rather than the reality of the situation. It matches her mood, at any rate: unclear and a little bit damp, a little bit sad.

Her left shoulder still hurts, though not as badly as before. Bucky had lost his mechanical arm in the fight against Tony (don’t think about that too much), his left one. He’s still Steve’s soulmate - is it too much to wonder if he is also hers? That, somehow, the universe created a triad of souls that fit together?

It certainly would fit in with the Hawkeye Luck, to be cosmically linked to both of the supersoldiers, to have to carry bruises for both of them.

“Kate.”

She turns away from the window, giving Sam a tired smile. “Hey.”

“Where’s Steve?”

“With Bucky - he’s going back into cryo. Something about not trusting himself.”

Sam nods slowly, watching her. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“How’s your sense of trust these days?”

Kate sighs, crossing her arms and looking back out the window. “It wasn’t about trust.” She would still count on them - any of them - to have her back in a fight. The Accords, the unfortunate events surrounding them, it had brought out the worst in everyone. Clint’s anger, Steve’s black-and-white view, Vision’s absolute views on authority, Tony’s debilitating loads of guilt… everyone was to blame for how it had ended. An argument could be made for absolving Ant-Man and Spider-Man, maybe, but overall, it had been everyone’s fault.

They stand in silence for a few moments longer, before Sam speaks again.

“I’m headed out, tomorrow morning. King T’Challa set up a house, outside of the city. It’ll be quieter. Wanda’s coming, too.” The unspoken invitation is obvious.

Kate worries her lip between her teeth. “Not yet,” she finally says. “I will, but not… not yet. Steve and I…” She shakes her head slightly. “There’s a lot we need to talk about. Sooner, not later.”

He rests his hand on her shoulder in a silent acknowledgement, goodbye, and show of solidarity, and she turns to give him another small smile. They’ve gotten good at reading each other over the years; she knows that he will be there for her, no matter what happens, and he knows that she will keep her promise.

Sam leaves, and Kate is alone with the fog again.

He and Wanda will be gone come morning. Clint had left almost as soon as they had arrived - off to meet Natasha somewhere that only the two of them knew about. Scott had vanished into one of the many labs with a satellite phone, mumbling something about calling a man named Hank. Bucky was being prepared for cryo-sleep once more, though this time it would be with a send-off from his best friend.

Everyone had made it, they were all free (somewhat), and the most serious injury was the loss of Bucky’s arm, though T’Challa had assured them that a replacement would be ready when it was time to reawaken him.

It should be a win, but it doesn’t feel like one.

Rhodey had nearly died. Natasha was a fugitive (and, unlike the rest of them, she was not safe behind Wakandan borders). Vision was making mistakes. Tony was so desperate he had recruited a child.

(Thor and Bruce were also still AWOL, but that was an entirely separate issue at this point.)

Kate shivers as a wave of ice seems to rush through her veins without warning. Had they just put Bucky under?

She turns to find a jacket, resigning herself to more time spent wrapped up in layers, and adds ‘ _ possibility that Steve, Bucky, and I are all soulmates to each other, not just Bucky-Steve and Steve-me’ _ to the list of things to discuss with Steve.

The thought crosses her mind, as she leaves the room, that maybe she should have taken her father up on the offer to travel with him and Heather on the yacht for a while.

No, she decides immediately, that wouldn’t have helped anything. She still would have answered Sam’s text for help. She still would have gone to Germany. She still would have fought her friends.

She might have been born a Bishop, but Kate knew, without a doubt, that her core self was all Hawkeye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -confetti- ITS DONE! THE CIVIL WAR ARC IS FINALLY DONE!
> 
> I still haven't decided if I want to go full AU now, or wait until IW is released. I'm leaning towards AU, but I'm not sure tbh. If you have a preference, let me know in the comments!


End file.
